Tailor of Inverness, The (21 page)
Read Tailor of Inverness, The Online
Authors: Matthew Zajac
My ghosts in their home, here in this church, the only building left standing where they would have gathered.
Mateusz, Kazik and Adam c. 1963
Our time has run out. I want to visit Olga and Tekla. I want to re-visit the cemetery. I’d have liked to have seen Anna Laska’s relatives. I have so many more questions: what was Olga’s school like? How many pupils? How many teachers? What languages were spoken at school? Are there any Poles left in the village? Were there any Jews here? How many local people did my grandparents employ? Michael Boklach! He lived in Newton Mearns in Glasgow. We visited him and his family there a few times. He worked for my grandfather at times. But he’s dead now too. What did Anna Laska look like? What was her personality? When did she and Irena leave for Poland? How many others members of my family lived locally? Where did my grandfather’s brothers live? Did he have any sisters? How long had Zajacs lived here? Did anyone else know of my father’s ‘visit’ in 1944? But we have to go. I make another donation. Hrihoriy dictates an announcement about my visit and donation to the caretaker, to be made at the following morning’s service.
On our way out of the village, back the way we came, we pause to watch a woman milking a cow. Hrihoriy hands a few more newspapers to the woman’s mother and neighbor.
Then we’re off over the fields, passing the crosses and a few workers on their way home, finally freewheeling down the hill and across the river into Pidhaitsi.
As we walk up the steep hill to the main street, we talk about a beer, but choose instead to climb further uphill, past the cemetery to the football ground on the edge of town. And there we ignore torrential rain and have a kickabout. Hrihoriy has told me of Oleg’s footballing prowess. He once played for Berezhany, I guess the equivalent of Ayr United or Darlington. And it shows. There are exceptionally gifted professional
footballers
, like Pele, Zidane and Messi, and then there are the rest and for these players, the line between the top flight and the lower leagues can be very fine. Oleg strikes me as one of these players: he might have made it into the top teams in Ukraine, but for one reason or another, he didn’t.
I’m due back with Hala and Bogdan, and still the rain comes down, the sky weeping its apology for the driest summer they’ve had in years. I clutch the pathetic, whining brakes as we make our way downhill again to Hrihoriy’s house. I say goodbye to him after we exchange addresses and then I pop into the Kalba shop and buy three bottles of
horilka
. I give one to Oleg. We cycle down the street and at the point where we are to part, he asks me to wait. He runs down the lane to his house and returns with gifts for me: an old football pennant and a photograph of him in his trunks, standing on a beach by the Sea of Azov. He walks with me round to Bogdan’s house and we shake hands.
My final evening with Bogdan and Hala is subdued by my impending departure. I wash my hair and my feet and I pack. They press gifts upon me,
horilka
, chocolates for my children, a set of golden tumblers, a ceramic decanter and one of Hala’s home-made tapestries. We eat and drink a few toasts to each other, a safe journey and my return one day. The normally surly Bogdan surprises me by breaking into song –
Kawa
,
Vodka I Zona
– Coffee, Vodka and a Woman.
Bogdan and his family, Pidhaitsi 2003 Bogdan far left, Hala 2nd right
I’m tired. The daily round of heaps of food and drink, the constant effort to bridge the language barrier, the desire to respect my hosts by accepting their generous hospitality and the struggle to understand my father’s past and my connection to it is a combination which has worn me out. I’m leaving with an experience which is to take some time to fully digest. Both my physical and mental digestive systems have been under a lot of strain.
We drive to Lviv, leaving at 8.30am. It was supposed to be 8.00, but Taras was a little late. Then we have to drive a kilometre out of town in the wrong direction to fill the tank and after that we pause back in Pidhaitsi to pick up Lesia and her heavy bag, loaded with jars of mushrooms, oil, sausage, fruit and vegetables for her son Nazar, a forestry student in the city. She normally sends a weekly package of food to him by bus. Bogdan is with us too, the old man determined to fulfil his familial duty and see me safely through the check-in gate.
Taras coaxes his old Niva into life with the throttle. It strains to pull its heavy load up the hill out of town and we’re away. Soon, we’re in beautiful rolling countryside, vivid in the autumn sun, passing forests, leaves burnished all shades of yellow, orange, green and red, fields, ploughed and fallow, small groups of cows, hardly herds, often tended by an old man or woman stoically sitting by them as they graze. Sometimes we see two or three people moving their cattle, an old man, his son and grandson, and others moving into woods to gather mushrooms. Taras has to veer to avoid gaggles of geese on the road several times. There is a whole set of hazards: the geese, hens, cows, horse-drawn carts, sometimes followed by tethered foals, roadside produce sellers, little boys on bicycles which are far too big for them, crumbling tarmac, subsidence and potholes.
Taking the shortest route, we pass through the village of Brudanka, which roughly translates as ‘muddy village,’ where the road is a long succession of giant puddles, ruts and holes. The village is about one kilometre from end to end. It takes us nearly ten minutes to pass through. We pause to have a look at a stationary bus in the middle of the road, its sump spurting oil back into the deep hole which was responsible for piercing it. The driver looks on, resigned and helpless. I’m glad of my lift – it’s the Pidhaitsi-Lviv bus. After a few more kilometres, it’s Ivanovka and the same story, bar another stricken bus. Taras takes it all in his stride, knowing what to expect. Lesia is rueful when she asks me if such roads exist in Britain. She knows that my answer will be no.
After a couple of hours, we’re skirting the south of Lviv. It looks like a huge white Lego fortress, a massive Soviet housing scheme on the horizon seems to encircle the city. We turn north into an arterial road which takes us between the massive blocks and, in spite of their concrete brutalism, they’re teeming with life. Shops and kiosks line the thoroughfare, people come and
go, wait for buses and just get on with their daily lives. The large spaces around the blocks are green and tree-lined with very little litter about and the buildings themselves are in a reasonable state of repair. I expected something altogether grimmer and as the blocks give way to older terraces, detached houses, petrol stations, supermarkets, shops, it becomes clear that Lviv is far from depressed.
The old cobbled streets of the centre are very bumpy and I marvel again at the fact that the tramlines remain smooth and intact. The centre itself was untouched by serious fighting during World War II. It is dominated by 18
th
and 19
th
century architecture, crowned by the stunning neo-classical opera house. A few hundred metres away, down the boulevard, stands a new monument, a 6-metre bronze statue of Shevchenko, the bard, standing before a sweeping bronze relief, a representation of the Ukrainian people. We walk through a little arts and crafts market and I buy a few souvenirs, feeling rushed by the watchful eyes of Bogdan, who’s eager to get to the airport.
First though, we have to deliver Lesia’s bag of food to Nazar. We drive to quite a well-heeled neighbourhood and park behind Nazar’s hall of residence. I carry the bag for Lesia and we find Nazar’s room in a dimly-lit corridor. It’s simply furnished, around 3m x 4m with four narrow beds. Nazar greets us cheerfully, the food is unpacked and stored, Lesia collects the empty jars from Nazar’s previous delivery and we all go down to Taras and Bogdan. The Niva won’t start. I don’t want to miss my plane. We push it and that gets it going.
Twenty minutes later, we’re at the airport. Lesia and Nazar photograph us. I reach the check-in. Bogdan gives me my rucksack. We shake hands and kiss, saying nothing. I can’t say anything. We just look at each other with misty eyes. I blow a kiss to Lesia and Taras and I’m away. The security man takes a cursory look through my rucksack and I deposit my holdall with a baggage handler who takes me into a corner
and tries to wheedle dollars or euros out of me in return for nothing as far as I can tell. I’m exasperated, but I want no complications passing through to the departure lounge. I give him 50
hrivny
. He shakes my hand. It’s my last act in Ukraine before I board the plane.
A few hours later the rain pelts down as we board the plane in Warsaw. In the consumerist limbo of Warsaw Airport, I wonder about my journey into the past and my experience of the present in Ukraine. How do the two relate? I have often asked myself this question, answering glibly, ‘Without an
understanding
of the past, an understanding of the present is
impossible
.’ I do believe this but, as I’ve witnessed the desire to strive towards prosperity, barely nascent in Ukraine, in full stride in Poland, I question my purpose. Is it relevant only to me, when the ostensible vision of those around me, here in Eastern Europe, particularly the young and early middle-aged, is to move forward, forward, forward?
So my father was never in the Polish Army. During the period when he said he’d been in the Polish Army, captured by the Soviets and sent to Uzbekistan, he was actually continuing his work, learning his trade as a tailor under the Russian
occupation
until he was conscripted by the Soviets. I now had the testimonies of two people, Olga and Mykola, along with the photograph of Dad in a Soviet uniform. Some time after his conscription, he had married Anna Laska and Irena was born. Then he was possibly at the Front to resist the German invasion of 1941. There was the story of his capture by the Germans and his starvation in a German POW camp, that he had become a forced labourer in Germany, and the story of his presence on the front near Gnilowody in 1944 as a soldier in the German Army, which Mykola asserted was Dad’s own account, backed up by Uncle Pavlo. This period, ’41-’44, was when he said he had taken the journey of General Anders’ Army out of the Soviet east to Persia, North Africa and Italy.
It was all so sketchy. I needed more hard facts. I continued my search. I wrote to the Polish Army Archive: as I expected, it had no record of him being in the 51st Infantry Regiment. I wrote to the Germany Army Archive: they too had no record
of a Mateusz Zajac. I thought he might have given a false name. I tried Mateusz Baldys, but no luck with that. I wrote to the Russian Army archive: they asked me to specify which unit he had been in. It may be that with some comprehensive detective work, I could establish which Soviet Army units were recruiting in the Podhajce region in 1940, but that would entail a prohibitively expensive and quite possibly fruitless trip to Russia, so for now that was a dead end too. I wrote to the Red Cross Tracing Service to see if they had a record of him as a displaced person. That source may yet come up with an answer although, with a huge backlog of enquiries, the waiting time can be more than 8 years.
I listened to the tapes again with a more forensic ear. The pauses for thought, the hesitations, the struggles with names, places and dates took on new meaning. I checked the date of Stalin’s declaration of the amnesty for Polish POWs. It was 30
th
July 1941, not the beginning of 1942 as my father said. I found the exact location of Proskurov, the town where he said he’d found the Polish officer after the escape he had claimed he made from Uzbekistan. Proskurov is now called Khmelnitsky. It’s in Ukraine, a small city around 3000 kilometres from Uzbekistan. It’s only 180 kilometres east of Gnilowody. It was under German occupation during the period in question, impossible as a place of Polish recruitment. He could only have been in Proskurov as a Soviet defender, a German occupier or a fugitive from either the Soviets or the Germans.
All this research was carried out in parallel with what had become my new, overriding priority: finding Irena.
Edinburgh, Scotland 25th October 2003
Droga Pani Anna,
I am the son of Mateusz Zajac, from Gnilowody. A few
weeks ago, I visited my father’s birthplace for the first time and discovered that he had been married to you before the war and that you had a daughter, Irena. This was a shock for me: my parents never told me or either of my two sisters about this.
Mateusz died in 1992. He was a wonderful father to me, but I have been full of questions since this revelation, none of which he can answer.
A lady called Olga Zenov, who I think is related to you and who lives in Tarnopol, gave me your address. Another, much older Olga, who was at school with my father’s younger brother, Adam, told me the story of your first marriage.
I would very much like to meet you. I quite understand if you do not wish to revisit the past, so please do not feel obliged to meet me. However, I do feel an obligation to Irena, to tell her about her father and his life after the war. I would be very grateful if you would send me her address.
The upheavals of the war caused scars and shocks which, in some cases, have still not completely healed. My father lived a very quiet life in the north of Scotland, running a small, successful business as a tailor. He held things together for himself and his family here. I always knew there were experiences which he didn’t want to recount. My curiosity arises from a need to understand him and the events he lived through in order to
understand
my own identity. It’s taken a long time for me to begin exploring this in depth. I visited my Aunt Aniela in Augustow last year. I’d last visited her in 1990, when her husband Adam was still alive. Adam died in 1996 and the oldest brother, Kazik, died in Glasgow in 1988. Aniela gave me an address for Bogdan Baldys, my father’s
cousin in Podhajce. I didn’t know he was still alive and I contacted him earlier this year and visited him a few weeks ago. That journey has led me to write this letter.
I do hope that you will want to reply, particularly in view of my relationship as a half-brother to Irena. I hope you are in good health. Best wishes to you and your husband.
Czekam na szybka odpowiedz.
Najlepsze zyczenia.
Matthew Zajac
Gdansk, Poland @wp.pl 12th November 2003
We’ve just received your letter about Ukraine. I must say that it is quite shocking! You can be sure that we will do as much as we can to help you solve this problem. I’ll translate your letter for Aniela as soon as possible.
Love, Ula, Wojtek & Janusz
Augustow, Poland 2nd December 2003
Dear Matthew and family,
Wojtusz has translated your letter to me, so I’m replying. I’m feeling very poorly, my heart is failing, but I’m still on my feet. I may live until Christmas, but being 82 years old I feel I have managed to live long enough.
Now as far as your father was concerned, we knew everything. The fact that he had been in the Russian army was not his fault and if he hadn’t gone into hiding they would have exiled him to Siberia and he would have perished there, because those who were from here
and were hiding not wanting to join the army were caught by the Russians and transported to Siberia and murdered there.
And the fact he had been married – he always
maintained
that the child was not his, but how much truth there is in it – is unknown. But he was a very good man always helping other people and us, as much as he could. He had one weakness, namely he liked women, but I can’t say a bad word about him. And later he took our son Jurek and saved him from the communists. And he was helping us and we were sending 400 zlotys every month to granny via Moscow and she had more money than those in the kolkhoz.
And there was nothing to go back to Ukraine for, because the Russians had invaded it.
Your father was a very decent man. You can be proud of your father. And you can always come to Poland, both to Gdansk and Augustow. There is enough to eat and a place to sleep.
All the best,
Aniela
Pidhaitsi 23rd December 2003
Dear Matthew,
Many thanks for the letter you’ve written and for the photos. They are great. We’ve already been waiting for your letter. Many times Bogdan asked me if you called and so did my students. Bogdan thought something was wrong when you were here. He was so happy receiving your letter. His granddaughter translated for him and in
the evening he came to my parents with this letter and asked me to translate again.
We are glad that you liked the trip. As to my going to Hnilowody, I think I’ll do it after Christmas. First, I’ll have more free time. Second, maybe roads will freeze a little bit because now it’s practically impossible to get there except on a horse. I’ll ask some of my friends to take me there. As to your father’s visit to the village during the war, Tekla doesn’t know about it, we asked her. Maybe Olga knows.
Have you already had information from the British Army Records? What about Irena? Did Anna Laska answer you? And how is your mother? What was her reaction when you told her all these things? Don’t you think that it was your parents’ secret and they didn’t want you to know about his past?
All the best,
Lesia Kalba
I needed to see his British Army Record. In order to do that, I needed to get my mother’s written permission. She refused to give it. She told me that she couldn’t understand why I needed to see it, why I needed to dig up all that old stuff. She told me that I should show more respect to my dead father, who had been such a good man, who had given me so much. She suggested I was simply looking to exploit his life. But in her heart, she understood that a child has the right to know his father. She knew that I loved and respected him and though she was afraid for herself, for what might be discovered, for what I might expose, for what her community of friends in Inverness might think should unpalatable facts become known, she relented. After many months
and several attempts at persuasion, she wrote her letter of authorisation.
Edinburgh 30th August 2004
Droga Pani Anna,
It’s nearly ten months since I wrote to you. I’m writing again in the hope that you will receive this letter and feel able to reply. I hope you’ll understand that I feel compelled to persist.
If you received my first letter, you’ll know that I would like to contact Irena. Please understand that I simply want to tell her about her father. I’m sure she must be curious. I would be delighted to meet her.
I was in Poland for a holiday with my family in July, visiting my aunt Aniela in Augustow. It did occur to me that I could drive to Mieszkowice and pay you a visit, but I don’t want to do that without an invitation from you. I would be grateful and thrilled to meet you.
I know you must have had a difficult time during the war and that my father’s behaviour towards you may not have been as good as it should have been. I hope you can understand my need to know his buried history and that you’ll decide that you want to help me. Please understand also that I do appreciate how sensitive this subject is. I have no intention of causing you and Irena any upset or embarrassment. I do believe that reaching out like this can be a very constructive and positive act. Please get in touch
.
Ministry of Defence, Ruislip, Middlesex
11th February 2005
Dear Mr. Zajac,
Thank you for your recent letter and enclosures and in reply please find a statement of service for your late father as requested.
In Poland, he was called up from the Polish Army reserve on 20
th
August 1939, and with the 51
st
Infantry Regiment, he fought against the Nazi invasion.
There are now two conflicting statements as to his actions between 1940 and 1945. These statements were made by your father, first on enlistment in the British Army in Italy and then in the Polish Resettlement Corps in the UK. There is no way we are able to confirm either of them:
According to the first statement, he was conscripted and served in the Soviet Red Army from May 1940 to December 1943 and then he was in the German Army from July 1944 to 7
th
May 1945, the day Germany surrendered.
According to the second statement, he was deported as forced labour to work in a sawmill in Germany from 1939 to 1943. He was then in the former USSR as a soldier from 1943 to 1944 and in Germany as a prisoner of war from 1944 to 1945.
I can confirm the following particulars of the British military service of 30086980 – Private Mateusz Zajac:
Service in Italy with the Polish Forces under British Command from 3 June 1945 to 17 March 1947. Finally discharged 4 October 1948. Conduct: good.
So now I had incontrovertible evidence that my father was never in Anders’ Army, never in Persia, North Africa and the invasion of Italy. To have joined up with the British Army in June 1945 in Italy, a month after the German surrender, he must either have gone through a displaced person’s camp, probably in Germany, or been captured as an enemy soldier and identified as a Pole before transfer to the Polish 2
nd
Corps, or both.
The two conflicting statements came from his own mouth. The first is clearer than the second and, in my view, much closer to the truth. The first was made on enlistment on June 3
rd
1945, the second nearly two years later, on March 18
th
1947 on enlistment into the Polish Resettlement Corps. He had had nearly two years to learn of the war’s outcome, the new political settlement, and the beginnings of the Cold War. By the time of this second statement, he would have known that a return to Poland was out of the question. As a former member of the Red Army who had fallen into the hands of the Germans, and then as a former member of the German Army, there would have been only one destination for him at the hands of the Communist authorities: the gulag. His only option was to settle in the west, among a population which had fought Germany and which was becoming increasingly hostile towards the Soviet Union. Out of fear and the survival instinct which had kept him alive during the war, he had begun to construct his new post-war identity in his new refuge. Why would he want people in Britain to know he had fought in the armies of both these enemy powers?
His admission of membership of the Red Army in his British Army Record simply confirmed the photographic evidence and the accounts of Mykola and Olga. His admission of
membership
of the German Army also confirmed Mykola’s claims, though there is confusion about the dates. Aniela’s letter of 2
nd
December 2003 provides a possible explanation of his
movement from the Soviets to the Germans: ‘The fact that he had been in the Russian army was not his fault and if he hadn’t gone into hiding they would have exiled him to Siberia and he would have perished there, because those who were from here and were hiding not wanting to join the army were caught by the Russians and transported to Siberia and murdered there.’
