The Old Brown Suitcase (3 page)

(WARSAW, 1939)

I AM SIX
.

I hear airplanes in the distance, and I am running towards a building for cover. I pass a baby in a carriage under a tree. I stop to look at her. She is wearing a pink bonnet, and her blue eyes look up at the sky. I can’t see Father. Where is he?

An airplane roars above; people are running. The baby starts crying. I don’t know what to do. I try to stop several people to tell them about the baby, but they just rush past me.

Suddenly masses of planes thunder over the city. Father appears out of nowhere, running. He picks me up and carries me into the building and down the stairs to a cellar. Although there is whistling and crashing above us, it feels safer inside this dingy place, even though it smells of dampness and mould. The temporary shelter is crowded with people, some sitting on wooden benches, others on the floor. All look terrified. The men have their arms around the women and children. A woman is weeping; a child wails.

Someone says that when you hear a long whistle, a bomb is about to fall on a building. We hear a whistle now, and I plug my ears and close my eyes. The whistle goes on and on. Will the bomb hit our building? There is a deafening crash, but when I open my eyes we are still here. The bomb must have fallen somewhere else.

As suddenly as it began, the grinding roar of the bombers subsides. All is still. No one moves.

A woman rushes into the shelter, carrying a bloody bundle with a pink bonnet. She is young and pretty in a polka-dot dress, but her eyes are filled with tears.

“My baby is dead,” she cries crumpling to the floor.

We stare dumbly at her and at each other, while she wails on the dusty floor. I listen to her sorrow, still seeing the baby’s innocent blue eyes looking up at the sky.

Father walks over to the woman and gently tries to help her up. Several women follow. One takes the bundle out of her arms. Another puts her arms around the woman’s hunched shoulders and leads her out of the shelter.

We walk out of the darkness of the cellar into daylight. It is the same warm autumn day outside, only now it’s darker with the particles of grey dust and smoke from the burning buildings. The carriage under the tree is smashed; pieces of fallen brick and steel lie all around us.

I am frightened. What has happened to the rest of our family?

We rush home to find that both Mother and Basia are safe. But my mother’s pale face scares me. She looks ill.

“I was just having tea when the bombers came. We ran downstairs,” she says. “Everyone was gathering in the courtyard, and when some people ran down to the cellar we followed. It was horrid, just like the raid this morning. Basia cried the whole time.”

“I am sorry that we weren’t home. I was very worried about you,” replies Father, hugging her.

The German army is getting closer to Warsaw. Masha stays, but our cook and maid leave for their homes in the villages. We are sad to see them go.

The radio calls for all Poles, young and able, to join the Polish army to fight the Germans who have invaded Poland. Father says that he must join up even though he doesn’t want to leave his family. He promises to return soon. The day he leaves, Mother takes a thin gold bracelet off her wrist and gives it to him for good luck.

When Father kisses us goodbye, both he and mother have tears in their eyes. I look at them through a mist of tears blurring my eyes. We watch Father disappear down the corridor.

Mother tells me to pack my brown suitcase with my most important things and some clothes as well, because we may have to leave at any time. I take two of my favourite books and my sunflower costume. Mother helps me pack and shakes her head, unable to understand why I need the costume.

The days pass and there is no word from Father. I am not allowed to go outside. After standing in line for hours, Mother brings home rationed bread and potatoes.

The air raids continue to devastate the city. We seem to be constantly running to the shelters as the sirens sound. There is no water or electricity. We burn candles and carefully ration cans of preserves we keep in the pantry. We drink the syrup from the jars of fruit preserves, which we dilute with the water that Masha brings in a pail from the Vistula River.

Everything seems to be in a state of terrible confusion. The windows are closed and the drapes drawn most of the time. It is so hot I can hardly breathe. Often in the middle of the night I wake up from nightmares, screaming.

The booming sounds of guns are heard all the time in the distance. Mother says that half the city is in ruins. One evening we are sitting around the dining-room table when someone knocks on the door. Masha goes to the door and opens it.

A bearded man with dirty, tattered clothes stands on the threshold.

“Stefan!” Mother cries, and rushes up to him.

It’s Father. He looks worn and chalk-white. He tells us he has walked for miles, and has been without food for the last three days. Mother ushers him into another room. I want to go with them but Masha stops me. I wait impatiently for what seems a long time, then the door opens and the “old Father,” clean-shaven and elegant, comes in. I run to him and hug him.

Over tea and bread, Father tells us the story.

“We didn’t have a chance. The German Army is a powerful war machine, and there was no way we could hold them back for very long. I was wounded in the leg on the second day. Our regiment ran out of ammunition and there were masses of casualties. The Poles fought bravely, but it was an impossible fight to win. Our army pulled back and fell apart. We were told to disperse and fend for ourselves.” He sips his tea and continues.

“The roads were full of trucks and retreating infantry. I made my way through the fields and forests trying to avoid the road. My leg hurt and bled, so I tried to stop at farmhouses to get help, but the peasants were suspicious and frightened and didn’t want to help me. One day I saw an old peasant riding in a cart full of hay drawn by a tired nag. With the last bit of strength I had left, I hopped on the cart from the back and hid in the hay and rode part of the way to Warsaw. The old man didn’t even know I was there. He was drinking vodka all the way.”

We look at Father’s leg. Mother has bandaged it with a clean dressing, but already there is some blood on it.

“Don’t any of you worry, I’ll be fine,” says Father. “I am just so happy to be back.”

Mother puts me to bed, and I have no bad dreams. Father is back at last.

A few days later, we hear marching feet, the screech of vehicles, and loud voices from the street. We rush up to the window: the street is crowded with German soldiers and tanks.

“Get away from the window,” says Father. I look at him not understanding.

“Jewish people are going to have to be very careful from now on,” he says. “Hitler and his followers are out to get us.”

I don’t understand why the Germans don’t like us. And who is Hitler? I want to ask. But my parents look so upset that the questions freeze in my throat.

Several weeks later, we come home after visiting friends, and find our apartment in ruins. All the glassware and china lies shattered on the floor. The floor of my room is littered with pages out of torn books and stuffing taken out of my animals. Most of the furniture is gone.

Father says that the Gestapo, the German police, must have traced our apartment as belonging to Jews. They are destroying Jewish shops in Warsaw, and evicting Jewish families from their homes.

My parents decide to restore the apartment the best they can and continue to live there, despite the threat of possible eviction. There is no other place to go. Also, since there is a housing shortage in Warsaw, my room is rented out. I sleep with Masha now and miss my own room. But soon Masha leaves for the country, and I have her room all to myself. She leaves me a long string of beads with a cross, and tells me to pray regularly.

Winter passes and then the spring. One day in late summer, Father and I venture out for a walk.

German soldiers in green uniforms are everywhere. They speak loudly in a language I don’t understand; they always seem to be marching rather than walking. Some have helmets and rifles. Others wear caps and carry pistols in black leather holsters. They have high, very shiny black leather boots. The worst wear black uniforms and caps with the skull and cross-bones on them. They look sullen and angry.

Father doesn’t seem afraid, but he avoids main streets and we walk down the smaller narrow ones.

Through a space between two buildings I see men building a brick wall.

“What are they doing, Papa?” I ask.

“They are making a Ghetto,” Father replies. “The wall will close off a portion of the city and all the Jewish people of Warsaw will be forced to live there.”

A bearded man in a black coat passes by. He wears a white arm band with a blue star on it. He is not the first person I have seen wearing the star. After the man has gone by, I ask Father about it.

“These arm bands have been forced on the Jews. The star is the Star of David. Your mother and I already have ours, but we don’t always wear them. If you don’t, and you are caught, you are badly punished,” he explains.

“Will I have to wear one?”

“No, children under twelve don’t have to wear them.” Father sounds tired and irritable.

I still don’t know what a Star of David really is, so I ask.

“David was the king of the Jewish people a long time ago …” Father doesn’t finish.

A motorcade of Germans is passing by. Father takes my arm and quickly steers me into another side street. His step quickens, and I run to keep up.

Later at home, I think more about the blue star. The Star of David. I like the sound of it. Anyway, it looks much better than the swastikas, those twisted crosses the German SS wear on their uniforms. They are black and ugly.

In the months to come, the wall grows higher. Father says that in some places it is already eight feet high, topped with barbed wire and jagged pieces of glass, to prevent people from climbing over to escape.

(MONTREAL AND STE. ADÈLE, QUEBEC, 1947)

“
LA PETITE PAUVRE
,”
said an old man. People bent over me, exclaiming in French as I sprawled hot and breathless on the steps of a church. Father had finally caught up with me. He picked me up and took me to a nearby coffee shop. While I sipped a cold drink, he tried to assure me that the war was in the past, that there was peace now in the world, and I mustn’t be frightened by the memory. But my memory of war lingered on the way home. I felt dazed. The past and the present had melted together.

The next day, Mother took me to a Polish doctor recommended by Mrs. Rosenberg. The doctor felt my stomach, listened to my heart and lungs, took a blood sample from my finger, and told my mother that I was anaemic. He recommended vitamins and liver.

That evening I sat down to a plateful of liver and onions. Ina grimaced at the sight of it. “It’s like a blob of mud topped by browned weeds,” she said.

I couldn’t eat it and my parents didn’t force me to. Instead, they gave me some tablets which felt like cement stuck in my throat.

I forgot all about the tablets when dessert came, a banana split prepared by Mr. Rosenberg.

“Try
that
, young lady,” he said, bowing, as he placed it in front of me. I had never seen anything like it: a glass dish full of vanilla ice cream, topped with whipped cream, chocolate sauce, cherries and cut-up bananas. The mixture was unbearably delicious, and I couldn’t stop eating. Before long, Ina and I had our faces messy with ice cream. It seemed to me that Ina ate her banana split just as greedily as I had eaten my orange the night before.

Soon after this, my parents decided to leave Montreal. Lodgings in the city were too expensive, and we couldn’t stay on at the Rosenbergs’ indefinitely. The Rosenbergs suggested a moderately priced
pension
in the village of Ste. Adèle and offered to drive us there.

I was glad to leave. Ina didn’t want to come with us, so we said a polite but stiff goodbye in Montreal.

Soon we had left the city’s hot grey pavement and thick air for the gold and green fields of the Quebec countryside. Peaceful villages emerged, surrounded by wooded hills and farms.

As we went further into the Laurentians, we passed lakes that looked so clear and cool I wished we could have stopped and jumped into their bluish-green water. Finally I saw a sign that read Ste. Adèle, and after another kilometre the car stopped in front of a large farm house.

It was nothing like the
pensions
my parents and I had visited at Polish summer resorts. There, the resort buildings were large, elegant and white. Usually they were set inside orchards or surrounded by rose bushes and trees, and were close to the water and forest. In contrast, this Canadian
pension
was a sprawling rust-coloured wooden farm house with a wrap-around veranda. A tawny cat sat in one of the windows while chickens cackled on the side of the yard behind a wire fence. Two trees graced the front yard, and several flower beds brightened the entrance. No one was in sight to greet us. We took our luggage from the car and went in, walking through a wood-panelled hallway into a lounge. Mrs. Rosenberg surveyed the room with a look of distaste that said it wasn’t anything like her elegant home in Westmount. I liked it a lot.

Two large couches and three brown velvet chairs stood welcomingly on a worn, rose-coloured rug. The couches were covered in beige fabric with a faded pattern of red roses. The velvet of the chairs was quite bald in places. Here and there stood wooden tables with china animals and ashtrays; several floor lamps with frilly shades bowed over the couches and the chairs. Above the mantle of a red brick fireplace hung a painting of a farmer loading his wooden cart with wheat, his horse standing patiently as several children looked on. Surrounding the farmer and the children were fields and wild flowers.

The room smelled of mildew, mothballs and lemon, which brought back the memory of Babushka’s cottage in the Polish countryside.

The Rosenbergs wanted to leave, so we followed them out onto the veranda. Mrs. Rosenberg and Mother exchanged goodbyes with the usual niceties.

“You must come and stay with us again soon, my dear Lucy,” said Mrs. Rosenberg sweetly, to which Mother replied with equal sweetness. But I had the impression that Mother didn’t really want to stay there again. Of course she couldn’t say that, could she?

Father and Mr. Rosenberg shook hands heartily, and Mr. Rosenberg offered his help if we needed anything. Somehow I felt that he really meant it. We watched from the porch as they drove away in a cloud of dust, leaving us suddenly alone and apart from the rest of the world. At least with the Rosenbergs, we could communicate in our own language.

A small, slim woman came out of the house onto the veranda. Her blond hair was done up in tight curls, and she wore a dress patterned like the couches in the lounge. Her face was oval with a straight nose and wide blue eyes. She was attractive in an angelic sort of way. When she shook her head the curls bobbed up and down like springs. I couldn’t tell her age. I was fascinated by her red furry bedroom slippers.

“Please enter,” she beckoned. “I speak no much English only
français. Je m’appelle Marie.
”

Father spoke to her in French, only twice having to look up a word in his French/Polish dictionary. As she described the rules of the house and the meal times, I found I could understand her. It was wonderful to know that we could communicate with her, even if it meant sometimes using a dictionary.

Marie showed us upstairs to our rooms. In the room where my parents and Pyza were going to stay, everything was green from the wallpaper to the scatter rugs and bedspread. I followed Marie’s furry slippers up a steep wooden staircase to an attic.

It was hot and stuffy, but when she opened the window the country air dispersed the heat. The room had blue cornflower wallpaper, a wood-panelled sloping roof, a blue-patterned bedspread and a desk and chair under the window. Above the bed hung a cross, and next to it a picture of the Madonna in a sky-blue robe, her hands gracefully folded and her face demure and peaceful. I had seen such pictures in Poland in the homes of Catholic country folk. Most of all, my eyes were drawn back to the window. There, below the azure sky lay an emerald field, and beyond it swelled the hills, covered with dense forests.

Between the field and the forest stood a white church, its steeple gleaming gold in the sun. I stood enchanted, remembering the farm in
Anne of Green Gables
, which I had read in a Polish translation. Marie tried to tell me something in English but I didn’t understand. I said, “No speak English,” amazed that I knew enough to say anything. But when she pointed at the bedpan under my bed, I nodded in recognition. Of course I had seen one of these before. Then she pointed to a wash basin and white enamelled jug standing on the desk. She explained in French that when I wanted to wash up, I could bring some water from the bathroom downstairs. I said
merci
and she smiled and said that she must go downstairs and get the dining room ready.

Soon after Marie had left, Father came upstairs and announced that it was dinner time. I told him how well Marie and I had communicated, but I didn’t mention my first attempt at English, which still felt like sticky rubber in my mouth. The dining room had two long tables for the guests, who lived either in the farmhouse or in the nearby cottages. A girl about my age came up and said something in English, but I couldn’t answer, so she shrugged her shoulders and went away.

“See, you’re going to have to try and learn English soon,” said Father watching us. Of course he was right.

Dinner was meat pie, vegetables and potatoes, followed by ice cream with chocolate sauce. I was hungry and ate very quickly. I was glad that Ina wasn’t there to watch me.

After dinner I wished that the girl would come over again. I tried to catch her eye, but she didn’t seem interested.

Marie was busy clearing the tables. Her cheeks were flushed and her hair fell in limp wisps about her face. She looked over and smiled, and I wanted to go up to her, but instead I just sat there tied to my chair. If only I were as brave as that girl who came up to me before supper. So free and unafraid. All of a sudden Marie motioned me over to where she stood. Had she guessed my thoughts? She looked as if she could use a helper. I went over and offered myself. At first she hesitated. When I insisted, she gave me a tray and pointed to the dirty glasses on the table.

In no time the dining room was cleared and set for breakfast, and Marie invited me into the kitchen for milk and cookies. Before I knew it, I was learning French phrases and grammar.

“
C’est pour cela que je t’ai fait venir
,” said Marie. “Teach you
français
,” she added with a warm smile and closed the grammar book. Then she suggested that we go upstairs as it was getting to be bedtime.

She took up a jug of water and waited as I washed up and prepared for bed. Just as I was about to climb into bed, she raised her finger, as if to say, not yet, and she lifted her eyes to the cross above the bed. She knelt next to the bed and motioned me to do the same. Then she crossed herself, and looked at me as if I should be doing likewise. I did it only so as not to offend her.

Then she lowered her head and said, “
Prions.
”

I began the Lord’s Prayer in Polish just as Masha had taught me when I was little, without my parents knowing. Marie looked at me with surprise.

“What language?” she asked.

“Polish,
polonaise
,” I said in both languages.

“Oh …
polonaise
,” she exclaimed. “Je
suis canadienne-française, et vous êtes canadienne-polonaise.
”

“
Pas encore canadienne
,” I replied.

“
Pas encore canadienne, mais vous êtes catholique, n’est-ce pas?
”

I felt numb and couldn’t answer.

“
Bon
,” she said patting me on the back. She smiled at me warmly as she left the room.

“I am Jewish,” I said quietly. But the door had already closed behind Marie. Why hadn’t I told her right away? I asked myself in the darkening attic. Anne of Green Gables would not have held back the truth. You’re a coward, I told myself.

The moon had flooded my room with an eerie light, its pale glow illuminating the face of the Madonna above my head …

I woke up in the morning to the sounds of chickens cackling, cows mooing and birdsong. The room was filled with the smell of earth, a pungent blend of grass and manure.

Outside the attic window, sunlight bathed the corn field. The forest beyond the field stood dark and silent. I will explore the forest, I promised myself, and ran downstairs for breakfast. Marie, in a blue dress, hair tied back, served juice to the vacationers. She smiled in greeting when she saw me and said, “
Viens cet après-midi. Je t’enseignerai un peu de français.
” A French lesson in the afternoon? I nodded in agreement.

My parents were already seated at the table.

I told Father about the picture of the Madonna in my room and asked him what it meant to the Christians. He looked somewhat surprised and said, “In the Christian religion it is believed that Mary, the Virgin, had her son Jesus by immaculate conception. This means she didn’t do what wives and husbands do together in order to have a child. She bore a child whose name was Jesus. Christians believe he is the son of God. But the Jewish people believe only in the one Almighty God.” Father finished and looked at me inquisitively.

I didn’t really understand what he meant, and wanted to ask him more, but just then Pyza started to cry and my parents busied themselves with her.

I slipped out quietly into the garden and wove my way through the corn to the adjoining field. It was full of poppies and dandelions, but nowhere could I find my beloved sunflowers. I walked across to the forest.

This shady forest with its soft green moss and ferns could as well have been the forest in the village of Zalesie, where I lived with Babushka during the war.

How strange that happiness and sunlight could disappear from one day to the next, or one place to the next. Yet sunshine and darkness can exist side by side, I decided, seeing my own shadow outlined against the grass, black, like that sunny day in Poland when the light in my life had suddenly dimmed.