Journeys with My Mother (23 page)

The seasons in the forests came and went, and each presented its own challenges. While the winter was frosty and the deep snow of December grew thicker, the spring brought no relief: the rains and melting snow mired us in thick, impossible-to-remove mud. Only when the warmth of long summer days followed, could I run around barefooted and free.

But what has stayed with me was not the fear or the hunger but the eternal cold.

It was in winter that my indestructible mother succumbed to typhus. She was very ill and had to be taken to the field hospital. I was left alone with strangers. No one troubled with me much. Without shoes, reluctant to leave my burrow, I spent most of my days lying down, conserving the little heat I had. But in the evenings, when the attention of drunken men was focused on me, my life became wretched. My attempts to stay invisible lest someone get angry did not work.

‘Would you like to see Moscow?' A pair of hands grasped my head and lifted me up towards the roof. I cried in pain, my naivety amusing to them. But the men, so easily diverted, were just as easily angered, and it was then that they started beating me.

The high and slippery threshold of the
zemlyanka
was a major obstacle to my venturing outside. I was too frightened to ask any of the men for help. Once – I do not remember why – I did not get up at all and used my
ushanka
, my Russian hat, as a potty, remaining in the same position for as long as I could, waiting for something to happen.

I was sprung, of course. The men decided I was
nyenormalnaya
, abnormal. As a cure, I got more beatings and the
ushanka
, my precious warm hat, was tossed far away.

Weeks passed before I saw my mother again. I remember how strange she looked when she came back from the hospital without her hair. We scrutinised each other, both shocked by our horrible appearance, feeling sorrow and happiness at the same time.

‘
Mama, ty lysaya!
' I cried in surprise.

‘But look at you, you are also bald,' she said while holding me tight and trying to smile. She found a mirror so we could see our faces together: two shaved heads, two ghosts with large eyes on grey faces, two scarlet scars on each side of my mother's neck.

I wonder what instrument was used and whether there was any anaesthetic available while her lymph nodes were removed. Eventually the scars were no longer inflamed and their colour faded but when examined closely, they were always crooked. Later, I would no longer notice them.

The men complained about me. Ola dug up my snow-buried
ushanka
and washed it. The whole episode made her furious. I do not know what she told them, or if she complained about them higher up, but from then on no one hit me again.

Safety was the first consideration but food came a close second. There was never enough of it. Our staple was stale soy beans – not enough to live on, but enough not to die of hunger. After the war, under no circumstances would my mother have them, and I have yet to find out what they taste like.

Every so often, a group of partisans would venture out on
bambioshka
, a food mission. In peace time it would be called a robbery. They targeted small villages and isolated farms scattered around the
puszcza
. The peasants did not want to part with food, livestock, tools or clothing, yet they were in no position to refuse. All partisans, whether Soviet, Polish or Jewish, were armed. Equally harassed by the Germans, the villagers were caught between opposing forces. Whatever they did could be seen as collaboration by one side or the other. At some stage demarcation lines were established between the partisan groups, and the mutual accusations of banditry came to a temporary halt.

The spoils, however, were not evenly distributed. The hierarchy ensured that the higher echelons of officers were well provided for and little, if anything, remained for the rest of us.

By the beginning of 1944, the peasants were all but ruined. Had the war lasted a few more months, a famine would have been inevitable.

Once, after another successful
bambioshka
, a small miracle happened. I woke up to find next to me a few unfamiliar, wondrous things. My mother explained what they were. The two smooth oval objects were eggs and the small cube was butter. Gurgen must have come earlier in the morning, while I was still asleep, to leave these offerings. I do not remember eating any of it; what has stayed with me was my pitiful astonishment.

The man I remember was called Grycko. He was quite old, I thought, and, because he was Ukrainian, I imagine him with a moustache. He told me old Russian fairytales while carving soft, creamy-white pine wood to make me toys. I thought they were enchanting, delicate and beautiful.

The toys he made were miniature models of the tools he must have used in everyday life: axes, saws, spades, carts, horses and barrels, rakes even. I played with them all the time, but small and brittle as they were, none of them lasted. Neither did Grycko. He was killed in the last days of the war.

I liked the nights when a few people gathered in the
zemlyanka
to talk, or to remain silent, the potbelly stove glowing in the dark. Companionship made the primitive conditions bearable, as did intimacy and affection. Any day could have been our last. The adults spoke in hushed voices or sang about the partisan's life and hardship; about love and longing. In the quietness of the night it was comforting to listen, half asleep, to conversations I could not understand. The names Smolensk, Wolkovysk, Mogilev or Lida, spoken in melodious Russian, sounded evocative and somehow reassuring. My head would get heavier and heavier, until I fell asleep. I was like a young animal, clinging to my mother's fur for food and comfort, not yet able to make sense of the events around me. I thought my mother had mastery of everything and could always make things better, yet there was one event that she did not see coming.

It was an unusually warm and cheerful summer morning. I was still naked, sitting on a camouflage-green blanket, fresh air against my skin, eating semolina. I remember it clearly because it delighted my mother; she was just about to cook me some more. Suddenly, we were startled by the rattle of machine guns. Perhaps it was only an echo, but sharp and loud shots seemed to be coming from every direction. My mother dropped everything, wrapped me in the blanket and ran out of the
zemlyanka
. She stopped by a huge fir tree and put me behind low-growing, dense branches. Then, with a finger at her mouth, she gestured not to make a sound, and was gone.

I sat without moving under the sheltering branches. I heard more shots. Something was set on fire, someone was running there and back, shouting. Then, everything went quiet. I tried not to move, too frightened to make a noise. Time went slowly.

When my mother returned, she found me sitting where she'd left me, still wrapped in the blanket. She held me in her arms and wept. I wanted to know why she was crying; after all, we were together again, but she never explained.

For a long time, I assumed we'd been attacked by Germans. Now and then their planes flew over on reconnaissance or assault missions. Our dispersed bases, however, were deliberately kept small. The low roofs of our shelters – blanketed by snow in winter, sprouting grass in spring and flowers in summer, their appearance changing with every season – made them invisible from the air. Sometimes, despite all precautions,
Iskra
had to move to another place.

In the first years of the war, the Germans invested much energy in getting rid of the partisans. Their armed incursions into the forest were frequent, occasionally long-lasting and fierce.

But in the spring and early summer of 1944, things were different. Now, the Germans' first priority was to stay alive and evacuate fast.

After talking to Valerii, I am convinced that we were attacked by a group of Polish partisans, who could, one way or another, find our location.

Ever since the Soviets were held responsible for the murder of thousands Polish POWs in Katyn, Moscow had broken all diplomatic relations with the Polish government in exile. Now the Poles were even more suspicious of Stalin's intentions towards Poland. They were convinced that there was a plan to retain Polish territories annexed in 1939, and keep Poland under the Soviet sphere of influence. All this resonated in the forest of Puszcza Nalibocka. Cooperation between the Red and the White partisans – previously united in the fight against the Germans – deteriorated, developing into bitter and bloody conflict.

The Red Army arrived on a warm summer day which, for me, turned into a picnic in a forest clearing. That's how I remember it: soldiers in their green field caps and tunics spilled out of their vehicles and mingled with the partisans. Everyone was hugging, laughing out of relief and great joy. When my mother eventually found me, I was seated on a soldier's lap, my arms up to the elbows in his canteen filled with macaroni and spam, my face smeared. Food had never tasted so good. For us, the war was over.

The green blanket my mother had wrapped me in that day, though damaged by some forest creature, survived; I still have a piece my mother kept.

20

What Now?

There is another surprise waiting for us in Lida – an exhibition largely devoted to the partisans of
Iskra
. Had we arrived a few weeks earlier we would have missed it. As exhibitions go, this is a very modest one: one room of photographs and objects belonging to the partisans, including one accordion and a single balalaika.
³²
The photographs are old, of course. I can see some of the faces, whose names I am familiar with. Those advanced in years, as well as young high school students with childlike faces, gaze at me across the enormous divide of time and events. It is heart-rending to see them, since so many were executed for resistance or killed in battles. Prominent place is given to Dr Kalman Gordon, who escaped from the ghetto of Lida and joined the partisans. As luck would have it, he managed to bring his tools of trade. He turned out to be one of the more extraordinary people Ola met.

Inside the glass cabinets, carefully arranged, are corroded scissors, shavers, misshapen razors without their grit, pocket knives, oxidised coins, bullets, and the keys to houses which had long lost their owners. What interests me most are the medical instruments. The stethoscopes include tube models, which even then were museum pieces. Delicate glass syringes were sensibly stored in a metal cigar box of
Polski Monopol Tytoniowy
.
³³
I remember watching, fascinated, as Ola used to sterilise the medical instruments the old-fashioned way – in boiling water. The needles, like scalpels, were blunt from endless use. Nothing much could be done about it, I suppose. There are also a few forceps, spatulas and nurses' bags made of canvas marked with red crosses; also, threads for suturing, thick as cord, and not much more. I cringe at the thought that sutures exactly like these were used to stitch the incisions on my mother's neck. It perturbs me that her operation was carried out without anaesthetic; perhaps a few shots of vodka. Stolen ether or chloroform were saved for amputations and the like.

All these items, whether made by a blacksmith, pilfered from Germans or bought on the black market, have a personal story. I feel affectionate towards these relics of what is, by now, an ancient civilisation.

When we emerged from the forest in July 1944, we found Lida destroyed. I must be reading too much about it, because in my dream I walk with my brother from one ruin to another, looking for a place to live. But my brother Andrzej hadn't been born yet, and my mother and I were not homeless. We lived with Gurgen in a timber cottage at 22 Morgi Street, a short distance from the hospital from which we escaped eight months earlier.

At first, all the partisan friends were in Lida. Yet gradually, one by one, they went their own way. The war was not yet over and many one-time partisans joined the army. The women, many of them nurses with whom my mother had worked since the beginning of the war, set off on their long journeys home, to reunite with their families somewhere in Russia: in Perm, Novosibirsk, Moscow. My mother and I had nowhere to go so we stayed and waited.