The Amber Room (11 page)

“That week of indecision almost cost them their lives. An early snowfall blanketed Europe, and rumors swept their village of signs and portents pointing toward the century's worst winter. It was this same snowfall that silenced the arguments and finally pushed them to move, for there was no fuel in my father's village. The train of wagons bearing coal for their stoves had never arrived.

“The morning my family set off for Poland, others began the trek to Budapest, where later that month more than six hundred thousand people rioted for bread and heat. It was a very bad winter, young man. There were riots in cities and hamlets from Berlin to Paris, from Königsberg to Constantinople. We heard rumors of war in Spain—and speculations that the war would spread. Women gave birth to babies and cried when tiny mouths first sought the breast, for they didn't know if a world would exist where the little ones might live and grow strong.

“But all of these things were told to me much later, long after we arrived in Poland, and after my father had learned of the madness that swept the land of his forefathers. My father hated the Fascists with a loathing that frightened me as a child. He was a gentle, caring man, with great strong arms and a warm lap and a barrel of a chest. The only time I ever recall hearing him curse was when he would speak of the Fascist regime. No doubt he would have viewed Stalin and the Communist lies with the same contempt, but by the time the Communists arrived in Poland my father was already dead, killed by a Nazi bullet in the Warsaw Uprising, fighting for a country he had come to call his own.

“My father sought out the good people in Poland, and what he found in them he loved. The Poles are a great people, Jeffrey. They truly are. Their sense of honor and duty and love of God is very great, great enough to sustain them through a century and a half of military occupation, followed by
two world wars, the Nazi demons with their death camps, and fifty years of the Communists. Ask yourself this, young man. If two hundred years of such hardships had befallen the United States of America, would your people—those who survived—still be capable of calling themselves a nation?”

“I don't know,” he replied softly.

“Well, on to my story. The estate where my parents settled lay in Upper Silesia, and that region was soon to be the flash point kindling the German invasion. You see, Poland had ceased to exist as an independent nation in the eighteenth century. It remained parcelled out between the Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Prussian empires for one hundred and fifty years. At the end of World War I, when the Austrian kings were vanquished and the empire was destroyed, the boundaries of Europe were redrawn. Upon this new map Poland once again existed, and it included a portion of what once had been the Prussian empire. There were many, many Germans still living there, some of them landed and titled gentry. So the Fascists claimed this land as their own, a part of the Fatherland usurped by foreigners. But it was nothing but an excuse, you see. The Fascists intended to rule the world, and Poland was simply a good place to start.

“My father hated lies of all kind. To him, truth was the bond that held the world in place. It was the gift that one man of honor offered to another without expecting anything in return. For him, the Fascists were transforming Germany into a land built upon lies, cemented into place with hatred. It was evil spawned and evil bred, and if truth had no place there, neither did he.

“I grew up knowing only Polish friends, speaking Polish except in our home, where I spoke German. My father was very proud of my ability with the difficult Polish language. He never did learn the language very well, but he made friends even in those suspicious times by the fervor of his hatred for the Fascists. Everyone in the area could see his horror when Germany invaded. He joined the local underground, and he
spent the war years helping to hide and transport Jews seeking to escape the Nazi massacre. Because he was German, you see, there was less suspicion cast his way by the local military authorities.

“My childhood memories are all of faces appearing in the darkest night. Frightened faces. Exhausted faces. Faces who looked as though they never expected to see the light of day ever again. They were hidden in a secret cave my father dug beneath our coal cellar. Sometimes they stayed in that dark, airless hole for as long as a week, until the next stage of their passage was prepared. They came and they went, and I would scarcely ever hear them or see them unless I helped my mother take them food. I knew without anyone telling me that I should never speak of the ghost people living in my cellar. Even at nine and ten years of age, I knew that to speak of them would be the death of us all. And I burned with pride for the bravery of my dear papa and mama.

“It was in those days that I learned to pray, sending off these silent families into the darkness of an evil-laden night. Hard times and hatred allowed bad people to take over our homeland, my father often said to me. These new rulers were intent on killing all who challenged their ideas of racial purity or political loyalties. We had only one recourse, he told me every night as he opened the worn Bible and sought out a passage. We had only one refuge, in faith. Over and over he said to me, we must climb the stairway of prayer and enter into the most Holy Place.”

The kitchen door creaked open and Katya's face emerged. “Mama?”

“What is it, daughter?”

“Do I have to stay in here all afternoon?”

“We won't be much longer,” Magda replied, her eyes remaining on Jeffrey.

“Can't I join you?”

“Your young man and I are just getting better acquainted,” Magda replied. “Give us just a few more minutes, daughter. I
am almost done.” She waited until the door had closed, then asked, “Have I bored you, young man?”

Jeffrey leaned back in his chair, felt as though he had been holding his breath. “Not at all. I have a thousand questions, though.”

“You must save them for another time. We cannot keep my daughter cooped up all night.” The eyes crinkled once more. “You are an excellent listener.”

“There's a lot to learn.”

“I see you mean that. Very well, I shall await your questions with pleasure. For the moment, let me simply tell you what I intended, which was my very earliest memory. It was of our trek to Poland. We moved mostly at night, you see. The woods were often safer than the roads, for the roads were ruled by thieves. In the woods there were only wolves, and the animals were said to be much kinder to those they caught than the thieves.

“My mother used to talk of that walk, of how she trod endlessly behind my father as he broke a path and flattened the snow. Many times she wanted to stop and go to sleep, she said. It was only looking at my tiny face that kept her upright and marching onward.

“Mama used to say that I only thought I remembered what I did. She said I heard her speak of it so often that the memory became my own. But that is not true, young man. I can still see the icy nighttime landscape with the great shadow-trees and their dark branches cutting jagged edges through the sky overhead. Many nights there was a bright moon, our only light, and it transformed the forest into another world, one I have often returned to in my deepest dreams.

“Only my head rose from the knapsack's confines. I remember clearly the way blankets were wrapped securely around my arms and legs. It would be so very hard at first, when we set off each day at dusk, not to squirm and complain at being trapped. But then, ever so slowly, the icy fingers of cold would begin to claw their way into my papa's leather
satchel and wrap a steely grip around my little hands, and it would grow steadily easier to remain still and drift in and out of wakefulness. I knew what the cold was trying to do, you see. I had seen in my dreams how death sent the beasts of winter in to snatch me away from my body. After a few hours of traveling, I would be rocked to sleep on my papa's strong back, and then I would see the beast of cold there nibbling at my fingers and my feet, trying to cut the cords and let death draw me up and away.

“Then I would start awake, and there would be my mother's face, drawn and exhausted and worried, and I knew, as little as I was, that I had to be strong for her. When we were bedded down for the day in some kind farmer's barn or an empty house or if necessary in a riverbank cavern, I often heard my mother ask why I remained so quiet. Not even a whimper of sound, my mother would say, how is that possible for a girl of her age? And my father would look at me, and somehow I knew he understood, because instead of answering he would bend over and caress my forehead and tell me over and over that I had to be strong, and that when I could not, I had to ask God to be strong for me. That was my first lesson of faith, young man. I have carried it with me all of my days, and it has served me well. When I found that my strength was not enough, I turned and let God be strong for me. And He has never let me down. Never.

“The trip took twenty days. We lost six of the people who started off with us, two to thieves, one to a wolf, the rest to the beasts of hunger and cold. I lost both of my little toes, and no matter how my parents and the doctor might blame it on frostbite, I knew.”

Magda nodded her head slowly, holding Jeffrey transfixed with glistening eyes. “Oh yes, young man, I knew. I had slept and dreamed and watched the beasts of winter gnaw them off.”

On the train ride back to London, Jeffrey remained silent
and reserved. A half hour into the journey, Katya asked him, “What are you thinking?”

“Something your mother said.”

“Are you going to tell me what you talked about?”

“Later I will. Right now, it's still a little raw.”

“Yes, I see it in your eyes. Mama's stories have a tendency to do that sometimes.” She reached for his hand. “Just tell me what you were thinking of, then.”

“I was just wondering how it was possible for Poland to keep such a strong sense of identity over such a long period. Two hundred years, Katya. I know you told me about how the church became an anchor for the people, their language, and their heritage. But it seems to me that it wouldn't be enough. There must have been a
lot
of strangers who moved in, people who after a while started calling themselves Poles. And what about all the Poles who went overseas?” He turned and looked out the window. “I tell you the truth, when I think about the dreadful things your people endured, it feels as if somebody is stabbing at my heart.”

She bent over, kissed his open palm, raised it and set it upon her cheek, totally unmindful of the stares gathering from other parts of the train compartment. “Thank you for caring, Jeffrey.”

“The more I learn about all of this, the more I am amazed at who the Poles are.”

“You're as much a Pole as I am, Jeffrey. One grandparent, the same as me.”

“Just in blood. I don't speak the language. I don't understand the culture, I've never even traveled there before last year. When she was young, my mother reached this stage where all she really wanted was to fit in with her friends. She wouldn't even admit that her father had been born outside the United States. The whole idea of being half Polish embarrassed her.” He shook his head. “I wish there were some way I could go back and meet my mother when she was growing up, and tell her that she
must
hold on to her heritage, to learn the
language and keep contact with the family. If not for her, then for her unborn son.”

“I heard a story once,” Katya said. “A group of cows had gathered in a barn, and a flock of sheep were grazing on a nearby meadow. It came time for one of the sheep to lamb, so she went into the barn for shelter. By the time the lamb was born, a heavy snowstorm had started falling. Several of the other sheep, those with young offspring and a few of the weaker ones, also moved into the warm, safe barn.”

She gazed at him. “Now tell me, Jeffrey. Does the lamb become a cow simply because it is born and spent its first days in the warm, safe barn, or is blood more important?”

“Your stories are as harsh as your land. Where did you hear them?”

“When we were still living in Baltimore, my father got into financial trouble. I was very little, but my mother went to work in a ceramics factory,” Katya explained. “Mama was in her late thirties when I was born. They had tried and tried for years to have children, and they couldn't. Then they gave up, and a couple of years later I came along. Before I was born, Mama had started painting designs on pottery that a friend was casting. She had always painted, and she enjoyed applying her skills to ceramics.

“Mama left me with a neighbor, an old Polish woman I called Chacha Linka.
Babcha
is the word for grandmother or old woman, and Halinka was her name. Chacha Linka was as close to pronouncing it as I could come. She never learned much English, and she only spoke to me in Polish. I don't remember ever actually learning the language, but Chacha Linka talked to me in Polish all the time, so I must have picked it up. I can still remember coming home one day and saying something to my daddy and being so amazed that he couldn't understand me. It just didn't make any sense. How could I know something my daddy didn't?”

She turned to the window for a long moment, seeing out beyond the industry-scarred landscape to the world of
remembering. “Chacha Linka had more stories than anybody I have ever known. A lot of them were about the Bolsheviki. That's what she called the Russians until the day she died. Bolsheviki. Even though the revolution had been over for seventy years, she still called them that.”

“Sounds like a name out of some old black-and-white movie.”

“Not for her.
Bolshoi
means large or big, like the Bolshoi Ballet—the Grand Ballet. Bolsheviki meant members of the Great Party, although the Communists weren't really so numerous. Lenin used that name to make it sound as if they represented all the people. It was propaganda appeal, making it appear bigger than it really was.”