Loves of Yulian Read online

  But travel through Europe on a Polish passport was both hazardous and expensive in nineteen forty, and our often urgent financial needs made it a definite buyer’s market in diamonds. Our supply of precious stones was being quickly depleted. Our challenge at this point was to reach America, where Mother could sell our story to a publisher, before the supply of jewels ran out altogether.

  Not only did I understand all this very well, but I must have actually understood it somewhat better than Mother, because in Lisbon she had gone out and bought a new bathing suit and three new outfits, including a long evening gown, that she said were just for the ship, which would only be a two-week trip. All I had gotten for the trip, and all I needed, was a bathing suit, and I could have even done without that, and just worn my brown shorts. She had said that it was important for her to look nice, but she didn’t really need new clothes to look nice. Nor did she need to go to a hairdresser in order to have her hair washed, since you could buy shampoo at a pharmacy. I understood that women were more concerned about their looks than men, but we were running very short on finances, and who knew how long we would have to wait for our turn in the Polish quota for immigrating to America.

  Of course, I also understood about temptation. I knew what it was to see something in a store window that you wanted to have. I, of course, had never had the opportunity to just walk into the store and buy what I wanted, but for somebody who did, I could well see how that might be hard to resist. And my mother just didn’t seem very good at resisting that kind of temptation. Mother could only speak a few words of Portuguese, which was what they spoke in Brazil, and she couldn’t type or cook or drive a car or even sew—I could sew buttons on better than she could—so I didn’t see any way for more money to be coming in until we got to America and she got to write her book. So it might well be up to me to make sure that our funds lasted for as long as it took to get to America.

  “He’s very sickly,” I heard Mother saying to M. Gordet, as he helped her to climb down from the swimming pool on the ladder that was nailed to the side. Mother had on open-backed shoes on very high wedge heels and I could tell she was going to have trouble. Of course, I also knew she was talking about me again, and I dearly hoped she wasn’t going to tell him about the problem with my memory and what I had done in Hungary. I was relieved to hear her say, “He’s just gotten over scarlet fever. He caught it in Barcelona, where there wasn’t any medicine, and I didn’t know if he was going to live.”

  The part about scarlet fever in Barcelona was true. I had had to stay in bed in our hotel room for several weeks and been allowed to eat nothing but boiled, unsalted potatoes and boiled, unsalted fish, both of which were disgusting. Mother was out most of the time, trying to sell her jewels or get a visa to Portugal or, maybe, Brazil, and the boredom had been terrible too. The reason why there was no medicine was that, in nineteen forty, Spain had just gotten over a civil war, and they were out of almost everything. On the other hand, the part about my being sickly wasn’t true at all. But Mother had told that lie so often, that, I supposed, she had just come to believe it.

  Soon after leaving Lisbon, Mother had explained to me that our ship, which had a huge Brazilian flag painted on each side so that German submarines would not torpedo us, was a “mixed freighter” and not a “liner,” which meant that it carried both freight and passengers, and was smaller and not as luxurious as a liner, which carried mostly just passengers. On the other hand, it was also less expensive, which I had been happy to hear. The ship would make several stops along the way to pick up and drop off both cargo and passengers, so the trip would take longer than it would have on a liner.

  But we weren’t in any hurry, since we would have to wait months, maybe years, once we got there because America only allowed in so many people from any one country each year. Because the war had begun in Poland, there were a lot of Poles on the waiting list. But she assured me that we would get to America eventually and become Americans. America, she said, was the safest country in the world because it had a huge ocean on each side, and it was the strongest and the richest. Before the war, a friend of Mother’s, who worked in the Polish embassy in America, had brought me back a watch that he had bought for just one dollar in a pharmacy. Anywhere else in the world, you had to go to a jewelry store to buy a watch and pay a lot of money. America was also where they made movies, where they had cowboys, and the buildings were hundreds of stories tall.

  Mr. Gordet, whom Mother had met the second day of our voyage, was, Mother had told me, a vice president of the shipping line, and made the trip to South America quite often. He knew a lot of people in Rio, and would introduce Mother to people who were likely to buy some of her jewels. He also got Mother and me transferred to the captain’s table in the dining room, where he ate his meals. To be at the captain’s table, which seated ten people, like each of the other three tables, was considered a great honor, though the captain only ate with us two evenings. His chair, an armchair with a blue cushion on the seat, stood empty the rest of the time. One of the ship’s officers sat at each of the other tables, and I found my eyes constantly attracted to their blue and braid uniforms. In Poland, all the schools, except the one I went to, had navy blue uniforms with brass buttons. Since their meeting, Mother and M. Gordet had spent a lot of time together.

  The talk in the dining room went on in several languages, of which I understood the French and very little of the Portuguese and Spanish. On the second day out, we had a “lifeboat drill.” At supper the previous evening, one of the officers had explained to us, in several languages, that we would hear a siren over the public address system, which meant that we should put on the life jackets that were under our beds and report immediately to the spot on deck that we were assigned to by the chart on our cabin door.

  Coming out of our cabin, we saw a steward, already in his bulky life jacket, who then helped us to tie our own jackets properly and hurried us onto the deck. Once there, we stood in little groups beside each lifeboat that the sailors were doing something to. One of the officers explained to our group that in a real emergency we would be instructed to climb into the boats and be lowered into the ocean. Also, that there would be a crewmember in charge of each boat, and we were to obey his every command since he was trained in these matters. Then, he went on to reassure us that the Brazilian flag painted on either side of our hull would keep German submarines from torpedoing us.

  There were two other children on board, besides me. They were two brothers from Holland, who looked exactly alike, except that one had his hair parted on the right side and the other on the left. Mother asked me why I didn’t go play with them, and I explained that I didn’t speak Dutch, and it wasn’t likely that they spoke Polish. Mother answered that they probably spoke some French, as I did, and, if they didn’t, it would be fun communicating through hand gestures and mime, which certainly didn’t sound like fun to me.

  Even if they had spoken Polish, I would not have been anxious to make their acquaintance. I had not had a good experience playing with other boys. They always wanted to pretend we were soldiers, and that I was their prisoner being tortured or that they were cowboys, and I was a robber about to be hanged.

  At the hotel in Barcelona, there had been a girl, almost a year younger than me, who was also Polish, and we made believe that we were riding in a car, with me driving, up and down the halls, or climbing the Carpathian Mountains the way Mother and I had done, to get away from Soviet border guards. But it turned out afterwards that it was she who had given me my scarlet fever, since she was just getting over it when we began playing together.

  But, with M. Gordet translating, Mother discussed the issue with the Dutch brothers’ parents, while sitting in deck chairs, and reached the agreement that the three of us boys would all benefit from playing together, while the four of them had cocktails. Then, the three of us proceeded to sit cross-legged on the deck, while I stared at them, and they stared at me.

  The four grownups se
emed to fare a lot better, with no shortage of conversation. After a while, following some whispered conversation between the two brothers, one of them stood up and motioned for me to follow. While I would have preferred not to, I could imagine Mother telling me that I wasn’t playing nicely, so I got up and followed.

  The brother who had first signaled me to follow, led the way around to the other side of the ship, and the other walked along behind me. When we reached the section where the lifeboats stood, the leader indicated that I and his brother should stand together in front of one of the boats so that he could take a picture of us with the imaginary camera he now held in his hands. This, at least, was something to do, and it was something I had seen a lot of the grownups do with real cameras, so I took my place willingly, planning to propose a picture of the two of them, once each had been photographed with me. Watching him “photograph” us, I realized that I could mime the procedure much better with things like fiddling with the lens and turning the little knob that wound the film.

  But, suddenly, they had each grabbed one of my arms and were pushing me backwards, between two boats, towards where there was no railing between the deck and the ocean. Now I realized that they were trying to push me overboard. I couldn’t imagine that that was, really, what they were doing, since my absence would be quickly discovered and traced to them. This had to be a game—some kind of Dutch game. Looking down, I could see in my peripheral vision the wavy ocean rushing by and getting closer. But, on the other hand, they could just lie and say they didn’t know where I had gone. Or even that I had been showing off by standing near the edge on one foot and fallen off.

  Then I found that I could wrap one hand around one of the lines by which the boats would be lowered. Holding tight to this line, I kicked out blindly with my foot. I felt it hit some target and heard a cry from one of the brothers. His hands released me immediately, as he grabbed for his eye. His brother let me go as well, as the first boy burst into loud sobs. In a moment they were both running back the way we had come, the sobs warning me that I would not be greeted with cordiality on my return.

  I took my time on the way back, and, true to my fears, found the one brother sitting in his mother’s lap, a napkin full of ice against his eye, the other in his father’s lap. Seeing me arrive, Mother and M. Gordet both stood up. M. Gordet gripped me firmly by the elbow, and I was marched down to our cabin and told not to come out.

  There were two other Polish-speaking people on board, a Mr. Kosiewicz and his wife, Mrs. Irena. The woman looked a little younger than Mother, and they were both very good-looking. Mr. Kosiewicz was tall and thin, with wavy blond hair and blue eyes, and Mrs. Irena had long chestnut hair that fell in thick waves onto her shoulders, soft looking cheeks, and large, green eyes. She was taller than Mother and even more beautiful, which Mother as much as admitted.

  “That woman is so beautiful,” I heard her say to M. Gordet, as we saw the couple dance to a phonograph record in the lounge, before dinner. This was the day after my affair with the Dutch brothers, and I had not been allowed to leave Mother’s side all day.

  “They’re Polish, you know, Basia,” M. Gordet said and Mother said, “Oh, I didn’t know that. They look like professional dancers, don’t they?”

  The two were pressed very close together, and they moved like one person.

  Then M. Gordet whispered something in Mother’s ear, and I saw her eyebrows go up a little. “Well, it’s wartime, you know,” she said.

  I understood what she was saying. It wasn’t as though M. Gordet didn’t know that the Germans had occupied Poland and France and were, right then, bombing England. It was just that saying, It’s wartime, meant that certain things were all right, which wouldn’t have been all right in peacetime. But what all that had to do with the current situation, was a total mystery.

  “And they look very much in love,” she added, with a little laugh. I tried to guess what it was that M. Gordet had whispered in Mother’s ear about the two, but came up empty.

  When the record stopped playing, Mother said, “Why don’t we invite them over for a drink with us, George,” and M. Gordet got up and crossed the dance floor to where the two were standing. They spoke for a moment, then the three of them walked back to our table.

  “Mme. Padowicz, may I present Mr. and Mrs. Kosiewicz,” M. Gordet said, though he had a lot of difficulty pronouncing both names, “and this is Madame’s son Julien.”

  I stood up, as I had been taught, and shook hands firmly, with both of the guests, trying to look each directly in the eye. As I had discovered with many other grownup men around Mother, Mr. Kosiewicz did not shake my hand firmly or look me in the eye. His attention, I could see, was on Mother. But his wife gave me a warm handshake and looked at me from under her eyelashes with what, to me, was clearly an expression of shyness. I didn’t know that grownups could be shy as well.

  “I understand you and your wife are Polish,” Mother was saying, in French, to Mr. Kosiewicz. “My son and I are from Warsaw, but M. Gordet doesn’t speak Polish.”

  Now I could see exactly what it was that held Mr. Kosiewicz’s attention. It was Mother’s diamond ring. It was, I knew, the ring that Lolek had given her as an engagement present, and it had two large diamonds set side by side. The two were exactly alike and each one was as big as just about any diamond I had ever seen. I had seen the ring attract the attention of numerous people in the last few months, when Mother wore it. A lot of the time it actually spent in the lining of Mother’s dress, just below the waistband, where there were some tucks and a bulge wouldn’t show. A woman mother had met in Yugoslavia had fashioned a little pocket for her there, so she could get it in and out without resorting to needle and thread each time, which Mother wasn’t very good at. Actually, there were several pockets like that in the dress, but they were all empty now except for one that held the round, diamond broach, which Grandmother had given Mother just before the war began, and which Mother said she would die before selling because, someday, my wife would wear it. This sentiment was one that, at my age of eight and a half, I did not appreciate the way she did, and hoped that, if the need to sell it arose, as I could well see it happening, Mother would change her mind.

  But, while the broach almost never came out of its secret pocket, there were many times when Mother would display her double-diamond ring. As she had explained to me, she and my stepfather had been planning to divorce before the war, so the engagement ring had only monetary value for her. And in restaurants and hotels, I had seen many eyes attracted to the stones, which, I understood, was Mother’s intention. But as for Mr. Kosiewicz, there was something in his expression that seemed to say something more than mere admiration. Right then and there I decided that I didn’t like the man, and it occurred to me that, as a result, in my thoughts and when talking to my friend, Meesh, who was in our cabin at the moment, I would refer to Mr. Kosiewicz not by his name, but, simply as Mr. K.

  Meesh was a small, white teddy bear, though he was turning a little gray now. I had acquired him just before our escape from the Bolsheviks, when I was still seven and a half. At that time, I had considered him my son, and I would carry him everywhere, in the crook of my elbow. When we were escaping over the mountains, he had been in my backpack. But we were both older now, and Meesh spent most of the time in our room. When we traveled, he now rode inside my suitcase, rather than in the crook of my arm, because he really didn’t like meeting new people. But we could still talk to each other, even across a large room, though not through walls, in our silent language. We spoke to each other in words and sentences, just the way other people talk to each other, except that we did not need to say them out loud. And, when I got back to our cabin this evening, I would tell Meesh about meeting the greedy-looking Mr. K and his shy, pretty wife, whose first name I didn’t yet know, but didn’t want to call by Mr. K’s name.

  Now, as Mother and M. Gordet conversed in French with Mr. K., I noticed that Mrs. Kosiewicz, sitting on my left, sat q
uietly in her chair looking down at her hands. When the waiter came to take a drink order, Mr. K ordered something for her without even asking what she wanted. It occurred to me then that maybe she did not speak French. If this were so, then my duty as a gentleman, I knew, was to engage her in a conversation in Polish. The duties of a gentleman, such as pulling chairs out for ladies, picking their napkins up when they dropped them, opening doors, entertaining them at the table, and keeping your own nails clean and your hair combed, were things that Mother had been lecturing me on ever since we had arrived in Hungary. But exactly how one went about beginning a conversation with a lady one doesn’t know, was something I had not learned yet.

  On the other hand, I did have one weapon that had served me well a number of times in difficult social situations. That was the copper washer that I kept well-polished and in my pocket at all times. A man to whom we had given a ride in our truck, when we were escaping from Warsaw and the bombs, had taught me how to palm a coin, making it disappear and appear again out of people’s ears and places like that. The coin that he had given me to practice with, Mother had taken away from me, because I wasn’t allowed to accept money from strangers, but, long ago, I had found the washer lying on the ground, polished it, and had been practicing with it ever since. So now I slowly reached into my pants pocket and, hoping that Mrs. Kosiewicz did not see me doing it, maneuvered the washer out of the handkerchief that it was entangled in and into my palm. Then just as slowly, I proceeded to withdraw my hand and place it in my lap. For maybe a minute, I sat there looking around at the room, and finally turned to Mrs. Kosiewicz, on my left. “Oh, p. . . please Missus,” I said, in the awkward way the Polish language does these things, “did M. . . Missus know that th. . . there is s. . . something in M. . . Missus’s ear?”