Dobryd

  Dobryd

  Ann Charney

  New York

  PART ONE

  I

  By the time I was five years old I had spent half my life hidden away in a barn loft.

  I had vague memories of the world outside and I listened to stories people around me told of that world, but it was hard for me to believe in its existence. Was there really anything beyond the walls of this barn? I knew that there were people out there, people other than my mother, my aunt, my cousin and another family who shared our hide-out, but it was hard for me to imagine them.

  At certain times, when a German patrol passed nearby and I was forced to remain still, I would try very hard to see beyond the walls of our shelter. Curiosity, doubt and fear coloured my images. Within their spectrum I recreated the world from which I was banished. Half invented and half remembered, it grew in my mind and satisfied the longings that sometimes came over me.

  Yet there was no urgency to my game; I was content to go on with my life indefinitely.

  Some weeks after my fifth birthday, I became aware that something different was happening nearby. We began to hear new sounds. The silence inside our loft was shattered by the regular booming of artillery guns. Planes passed overhead and bombs exploded close enough to shake the walls of the barn.

  My aunt, my mother and the other grown-ups became very agitated. Our food supply stopped almost entirely, yet everyone’s spirits seemed to rise. The fatigue and listlessness which had reduced us to a state of muteness vanished as we heard the sounds of battle around us. People cried and laughed and talked on and on, as if they had just come together. I moved among them, looking at them with new curiosity, not understanding their words but affected by the contagion of their emotions. I too felt restless, anxious, uncertain. I was waiting for something I couldn’t even visualize.

  Then one day I was awakened by strange voices just outside the wall where I slept. I sat up, but my mother motioned to me not to speak. The others were awake and listening as well. Were these friendly voices? I couldn’t tell. They spoke words that were strange to me. I kept my eyes on the familiar faces of the people around me. These were the only clues I trusted. The voices moved away. Then they came close again. Whoever these people were, they had now entered the barn. They were just beneath us. If they climbed the ladder that led to the loft we would be discovered.

  My heart was pounding with fear. The tension of silence seemed unbearable. My mother looked at me and sensed my feelings. She put one arm around me, and with her other hand she held back the scream that was rising within me.

  For some moments we remained silent, listening, afraid to stir. Then I saw my cousin Alexander move cautiously to the edge of the loft. I held my breath as he leaned over the edge. When he turned back to us I saw that he was smiling. I heard him whisper to the others: “It’s all right. They’re Russians. I’m sure of it.” Still no one moved. The habits of long months of hiding could not be abandoned without an effort. We waited.

  Then someone began to sing. It was a song I knew. One of the Russian refugees in our loft, a man whom I called Uncle Joseph, had taught it to me. At first I thought that it was he who was singing. I turned to look at him and I saw that his lips were not moving. Then I realized that the voice was a woman’s and that it came from below us. I became very excited. Again I looked to the others to see what it meant, and I saw that they were crying. My confusion increased.

  When the song was over, a man spoke in Polish: “We are your friends. There are Jews amongst us. Trust us.” He repeated these words again slowly.

  My cousin returned to the edge of the loft and leaned down. “We are up here. There are seven of us and a child. Please help us to come down.”

  Then it seemed to me as if everyone around me went mad. My mother no longer covered my mouth with her hand, but in any case I had become mute. I looked at the people I knew so well and they seemed almost strangers in their behaviour. Weeping and laughing at the same time, they hugged me and embraced one another. I felt smothered in their arms. These embraces were not the ones I was used to; too tight, too close. I was frightened.

  A young man appeared at the top of the ladder. I saw him pick up my aunt and carry her down. I had to see what he was doing to her. I crept closer to the edge. Below me I saw other soldiers, men and women in uniform, with rifles in their arms. My aunt and the young man reached the ground and they sat down in the straw. He continued to hold my aunt and I saw him rock her gently as my mother rocked me sometimes.

  I wanted to go to my aunt and comfort her. But I had forgotten that for the last few days I had been too weak to stand. Now as I tried to rise, my legs folded beneath me and the walls of the barn seemed to tilt away from the ground.

  Someone, another stranger, his arms stronger than those that usually held me, picked me up and carried me down the ladder. We stopped near the doorway. I could see past his shoulder. For the first time that I could remember I looked out and into the forbidden world.

  A large orange circle covered the sky and coloured the world below. The fields, the animals, the farmhouse, all were illuminated in this strange, intense, blood-like colour. Suddenly I felt terrified in a way that was worse than all my previous experiences of fear. I heard myself scream, again and again. I couldn’t stop. At the same time my body went rigid with the effort of trying to get away from the doorway.

  I was certain we were in a trap. The enemy I had so often been warned about had tricked everyone around me. My mother was trapped in the arms of a stranger. My aunt sat peacefully close to another, her long hair spread trustingly over his arm. I would not be fooled like this. I would rather die than leave the barn to step into the horror outside. My past fears of bombs, probing bayonets and tracking dogs were nothing compared to the terror I now felt. I would never leave. Never.

  The scream that I had kept inside me for so long continued to pour forth. Everyone stopped. A look of familiar fear returned to their faces. They rushed over to stifle my noise. For them I was still a source of danger in their midst, the most vulnerable point in their defence. In the past they had doubted my mother’s reassurances. Now a hand came over my mouth, and my arms and legs were held as I continued to struggle.

  The soldier who held me managed to calm them. I was extricated from those desperate arms and carried over to a corner away from the doorway. My new protector soothed me with his gentle voice. He spoke Russian, and I could only understand a little of what he said, but it felt good to listen to him and be near him. I was fascinated by his appearance—so different from the hollowed faces that I knew reflected my own.

  We stayed inside for some hours, waiting for a vehicle to be brought around to move us. During this time the soldiers shared some of their bread with us. One of them took out a harmonica. While he played, his friends sang. Once again I saw that people were crying, but their faces had a new expression. I began to understand that there were many different reasons for tears.

  It was evening when the carriages arrived. Outside the barn the world now appeared a soft blue colour. My new friend, whose name I had learned was Yuri, picked me up and carried me outside. All the while his soft voice reassured me, and the sound of those words made me feel safe. They also bound me to him forever.

  The fresh air of the summer evening felt soothing against my skin. I looked around me. I was no longer afraid.

  II

  We came out of the loft at the end of summer, near harvest time. Even in the midst of war the farmers continued to work their fields. The air was filled with the fragrance of ripe grain. We saw very little of what we passed. When we left our hiding place for the last time it was nearly night. Soon we were travelling in darkness.

  Our carriage moved slowly through the open countryside. I sensed, without seeing, the v
ast empty stretches of space. Shrouded by obscurity, I felt myself overwhelmed by new sensations. The night yielded many clues and I grasped at them eagerly, straining to see into the darkness. The walls of the barn had fallen away, but the outside world continued to elude me.

  A gentle wind touched my skin, my hair, with new, delicious sensations. The odours that reached me reminded me of my past fantasies about the world unknown to me. As we drove through the night I saw the shapes of farmhouses outlined in the dark. Here and there in a distant house a light could be seen. Once, we passed a group of people returning from the fields. Suddenly I was glad of the darkness that hid our misery from strangers’ eyes.

  We were travelling in a horse-drawn cart. Behind us followed another filled with the soldiers who had liberated us. The two carriages were in such sharp contrast that they might have served as an allegoric illustration of life and death.

  In ours, everyone lay drained and silent. Throughout the night’s ride we were often closer to the dead than to the world of the living we had just re-entered. Memories of those who were not with us surrounded us. Even as I sat pressed close to my mother, I knew that her thoughts were far away, perhaps with my father, whom she hadn’t seen in three years.

  I had only just realized that not all people looked like the ones I had known in the loft. The sight of our vigorous liberators had reawakened us to the sad state of our own physical condition. In the loft we had forgotten the normal world and its appearance, and had become detached from our past lives. Now we could see for the first time how far we had been removed. We looked at one another outside the loft with different eyes, and we shrank from each other with a new sense of shame.

  Our ride was silent. Behind us followed the other carriage, and from it flowed a constant stream of noise and celebration. Occasionally one of the soldiers would jump down and come over to see how we were doing. For a moment a spark of animation would go through us. Then his friends would call him back and he would return to join in a song, or catch the last line of a story that would produce a new outburst of laughter.

  I listened to these sounds with a sense of wonder. The mood of the people whose bodies touched mine had no hold on me. I was immune to it by right of childhood. I wanted to be with the others. It seemed to me that I belonged to them. Given the choice, I would have quickly abandoned the arms that held me, the quiet sighs, the smell of confinement and illness, and gone off to join the others.

  I listened to their strong voices, their songs, and even at this distance from them I was happy. Happy for the first time in a way that was not related to the satisfaction of some physical need, such as being momentarily full or warm. This was a different sensation, vague, not localized, yet intense. I was surprised to find that it brought tears to my eyes. My mother, misunderstanding, roused herself to comfort me. I accepted her endearments passively and for the first time I felt distant from her. My attention was focused on the new, strange feelings inside of me. I hardly heard her.

  The ride seemed to last all night. I fell asleep several times and each time I awoke I wished the trip would never end. I wanted to hold on forever to the sensations roused by this new experience, to the night air that surrounded me. Between these two forces I felt myself floating light and free.

  Again I fell asleep and when I opened my eyes I saw that we were in a village. The houses were dark, closed up for the night, and the streets were deserted.

  We stopped in front of a farmhouse near the outskirts of the village. The soldiers knocked on the shutters with their rifles and finally a light went on inside. The door was opened by an old man. He lifted his lantern to get a better look at this strange procession that had arrived at his house in the middle of the night.

  One of the soldiers called to him: “Over here, old man. Give us a hand. We’ve brought you some guests.”

  He came closer. Now his light shone into our cart. He stared at us, his eyes wide with horror. “Dear God,” I heard him whisper, and his free hand went up to make the sign of the cross.

  “What are you scared of, you old fool?” the soldiers teased him. “They’re people just like you and me. You take good care of them for a few days and you’ll see how well they’ll look. Now come on, give us a hand.”

  The farmer stumbled backwards seeking a way out. The soldiers raised their guns and he turned to follow them.

  Three of the survivors were carried inside. When they were settled, one of the soldiers stayed behind to guard them, and our cart moved on.

  Soon we stopped in front of another farmhouse. Two soldiers gave their orders and we waited while the people inside prepared our beds. Yuri, my friend, came over to us. He lifted me out and sat me down in the grass. Then he turned towards the old woman whom I had been taught to call Grandmother during the months in the loft. She lay motionless in his arms, as she had been throughout the ride. Yuri looked at her closely. It was hard to see anything in the dark. He called to his friend who came over with a flashlight. They shone it on her face. I could see that her eyes were open, yet she looked as if she were asleep. Before the light went out I saw the soldier close her eyes and put her back into the wagon.

  I was too tired to question them. I felt myself carried inside and put to bed. I fell asleep, warm and comfortable. I was in a real bed for the first time that I could remember. For a moment I thought of Grandmother, and I wondered why they had left her outside alone in the cart. I decided I would wait till morning to ask my mother about it.

  The next day there was no sign of Grandmother, and I forgot all about her. New experiences and pleasures closed out everything else. Yesterday’s events were already part of a half-remembered nightmare.

  III

  It was decided that we would remain in the village until the Russians were ready to advance.

  The Germans were retreating. Small bands of them, cut off from the main line of retreat, still roamed the countryside making the roads impassable and dangerous. Alone, we would never make it back to our home in Dobryd. After such a long absence, my mother and my aunt resigned themselves to waiting out the last few weeks of war a few kilometres from their home.

  My cousin Alexander was no longer with us. This was the only painful event that I experienced during the first weeks of freedom. As soon as he had recovered his strength he decided to join a local band of partisans and fight the Germans. My aunt and my mother pleaded with him not to go. The war was almost over. The Germans were already defeated. Why should he now risk the life that they had saved against such odds?

  Alex heard them out, but there was nothing they could say to change his mind. He had always wanted to fight. He had remained in the loft only because of our need for him.

  Now that we were free and protected he could at last do what he had so often talked about. He was eighteen, burning with the need for revenge, and so he left us. We missed him terribly. Yet so much was happening to me during those first weeks of freedom that I was never sad for long. I had no idea that he was in danger and so it was easy to think of other things.

  War still raged around us, but miraculously the village that sheltered us remained untouched and seemingly unconcerned. We awoke each morning to the crowing of roosters and the distant firing of artillery shells. The peasants went through their morning chores. The animals waited to be fed. The repetitive pattern of farm life continued, unaltered from one day to the next, as it had from generation to generation, so that it had acquired the permanence of nature itself.

  Danger seemed unlikely in this setting. Each day I felt safer and more secure. After a while it seemed to me that my own life was part of the peaceful, rooted existence of the village. I discarded the past as eagerly as I took to my new life.

  Now the outside world was within reach. The room I slept in, the yard out front, the neighbouring houses, the trees, the animals and the sky were all unquestionably real. I began to think of my months in the loft as a story that had happened to someone else. Everything in me turned towards the new world, the real wo
rld, as a plant bends towards the sun.

  I suppose the world in which I found shelter did not really exist, at least not in the way that I perceived it.

  These same peasants who under Russian orders fed us from supplies hoarded with the reflex of their forefathers, who fussed over us with home remedies and peasant potions, would have considered it a fine amusement two months earlier to turn us over to the Germans and watch our execution. Our presence among them was only another load in an already burdened existence. They sheltered us when they had to, or if it were profitable. Otherwise they would turn us out with no remorse. Centuries of occupation and maltreatment had developed in them the capacity for flexible neutrality; they satisfied their masters, whoever they might be, and at the same time they continued to survive and to outlast them.

  I had no suspicion of this at the time. While my mother and my aunt remained unmoved by the reverence and attention which they received from our hosts, I was completely won over. I liked the old couple, Djunek and Marisia, but most of all I liked their daughter, Kazia. They, of course, realized what a natural ally they had in me and made the most of it. They fussed over me, exaggerated my qualities, showered me with endearments, and I repaid them with utter devotion. My family’s attempts at restraint were hopeless. With a child’s typical hedonism in the face of pleasure I would not allow any criticism of my new friends.

  One day Kazia called me into her room. “I have a surprise for you,” she said. As I held back, considering for a moment whether the word surprise meant something pleasant or unpleasant, Kazia came over and picked me up. We went into her room. I noticed a photograph of her husband, in uniform, smiling at us. She put me down on the bed, piled so high with quilts that I sank into it as into deep water.

  She got down on her knees and pulled out a box from beneath the bed. I took it from her and looked inside. There was a doll that Kazia had made from bits of cloth and stuffed with straw. She had two braids, as I did, and a cheerful smile had been embroidered on her face.