Mosaic Page 14

  It’s hard to imagine your parents being young, impetuous and in love, but judging by the way he swelled with pride whenever he looked at her even when she was well past middle-age, I can imagine how dazzled he was in the days when she resembled Carole Lombard, the blonde American film star. ‘Mummy was far the prettiest woman at the party,’ he would often tell me, while she would wave a disparaging hand and tell him not to be silly.

  From the moment they met, my father was bewitched by this small blonde with skin which glowed like ivory and a smile which lit up the room. But Bronia wasn’t just another pretty face: there was something strong and spirited about her, and her high cheekbones and slanting cat-green eyes hinted at Slav horsemen galloping across the steppes.

  My mother was flattered by the attentiveness of this older man whose dignified bearing, slight limp and greying hair reminded her of an Austrian officer. He was witty, cultured and so much more interesting than her younger admirers. ‘He was transparently straightforward,’ she would reminisce later, moving her small hand in front of her in a slicing motion. ‘I liked his honesty from the moment we met.’ As they became acquainted, she was touched by the vulnerability behind his reserved manner. ‘He’s always had a complex because of his stiff leg,’ she used to tell me.

  When they met in the late summer of 1935, my father was thirty-four years old, unmarried and already set in his ways. An old fuddy-duddy, my mother used to mutter whenever she was angry with him. Once, when I was a teenager trying to figure out how you knew when you’d met the right person, I asked him whether it had been love at first sight. By then my father was more distinguished-looking than ever. His white hair made his blue eyes even bluer and the grey moustache emphasised his nicely shaped lips. My mother said that he resembled Sir Anthony Eden, the English Prime Minister at the time.

  My father was sitting in his armchair by the window, above a curve in the wide tree-lined street that swept down towards Bondi Beach. Looking up from the Golden Delicious apple he was peeling in one long unbroken spiral, he mused, ‘Love at first sight? I’m not sure if that ever happens. I think there comes a time when you’re ready to meet someone and settle down, and when you meet someone suitable, that’s it.’

  My romantic soul was affronted by this version of events. Perhaps at that moment he’d forgotten the rapture of their courtship in Poland, or maybe he was just being prosaic so that I wouldn’t get too carried away by unrealistic notions. Certainly the intensity with which he pursued my mother is inconsistent with his explanation. But maybe you really can fall in love with almost anyone if you make up your mind to do so, so perhaps there was some truth in what he said.

  I repeated my father’s remarks to my mother during an argument we were having one day. Twenty-two years after their first meeting, she had grown rounder, but she was still blonde and pretty, with a flawless, unlined complexion that all my friends remarked on, and quick, firm footsteps which reflected her quick, firm mind. Leaning against the red laminex bench top in the kitchen of our Sydney flat where she was rolling out pastry for her mushroom pie, I lashed out at her with all the spite of a wounded seventeen-year-old: ‘Daddy said he was never really in love with you!’

  She fixed her sharp green gaze on me and to my amazement burst out laughing. ‘That’s a good one! He was so smitten, he wouldn’t let me out of his sight from the moment we met!’

  I know that it was my mother’s sister Mania who met my father first. They were all staying at a guesthouse in the fishing port of Hel. For city dwellers from land-locked places like Krakow and Lwow, the Hel Peninsula, a triangular sandbar jutting out into the Baltic Sea, was a magical place of vast skies and endless seas. Above the beaches, among pine trees twisted into strange shapes by the wind, guesthouses catered for holiday-makers who descended on the small fishing port each summer. They smeared perfumed Nivea cream onto their pallid limbs and lay on the white sand in their demure knitted swimsuits, soaking up the sunshine while children played with buckets and spades beside them.

  While they were dressing for dinner, Mania was thinking about the interesting man she’d met that afternoon. Flipping open her silver cigarette case with a flourish, she lit up and narrowed her khaki-coloured eyes with pleasure as the smoke hit her lungs. Glancing over at her sister whose complexion was smooth and white as alabaster, she sighed. ‘You’re so lucky, Bronia, to have such good skin.’ My mother flashed her a disapproving glance. ‘Your skin would probably look better if you didn’t smoke,’ she retorted.

  Mania shrugged. She was used to her sister’s remarks. Straightening her flowered silk dress over her slim hips, she looked approvingly at the long-legged silhouette in the mirror. From that angle, her rounded shoulders were hardly noticeable. ‘I met a dentist from Krakow this afternoon,’ she said. ‘Henek Baldinger. He’s a fair bit older than us, but he’s good-looking and there’s something very nice about him. I think he’d be fantastic for you. Let’s go to the dance tonight and I’ll introduce you.’ My mother waved a dismissive hand. Mania was always enthusing about some man or other, and anyway she’d had enough of men for the time being. She’d travelled across Poland to the Hel Peninsula to get away from involvements, not to look for new ones.

  But later that evening, floating in his arms to the languorous strains of the tango, she had to admit that she was drawn to this man whose cornflower blue eyes rested on her face while his hand felt pleasantly firm on her rose-coloured crepe dress. Looking into Bronia’s slanting emerald eyes during the foxtrot, my father Hesiu, who had Aryanised his Jewish name to Henryk, or Henek for short, marvelled how well this little woman followed his steps, not missing a beat in spite of his stiff leg. He started saying: ‘I met your older sister before—’ when my mother blurted out, ‘Everyone thinks that Mania’s older, but she’s actually younger than me.’ Her honesty made him smile. Most women would have jumped at the chance of appearing younger.

  Over the next few days the dentist from Krakow monopolised Bronia day and night. Just once, when another man asked her to dance, his eyes resembled icepicks. Later I came to know and dread that glacial look that came into his eyes whenever he was angry or upset. From that moment he made sure that no-one got near my mother again. ‘I can see that Henek is getting serious,’ Mania chuckled. ‘You won’t get rid of him so easily!’ But my mother shook her head impatiently. ‘You’re always dramatising things,’ she scoffed. ‘We’re going home soon and he’ll go back to Krakow so we’ll never see each other again.’

  Krakow and Lwow were at opposite ends of Galicia, almost seven hundred kilometres apart, a vast distance in the days before mass air travel. But as far as my father was concerned, distance was an inconvenience but not an impediment. He made it clear that for him this wasn’t just a holiday romance, and although she blushed whenever he spoke of love, my mother had to admit that each morning the thought of seeing him again made her heart beat in a peculiar but delicious way. After all the turmoil of the past year, it felt wonderful to enjoy herself again.

  My father too had recently broken off a serious relationship. His girlfriend had been a beautiful woman with one major defect: she was very religious. The thought of reverting to the lifestyle that had been drummed into him at home, of keeping a kosher home, attending synagogue and observing religious rituals he didn’t believe in, obviously outweighed his love for her and he’d ended the relationship shortly before coming to Hel.

  But this girl from Lwow had a down-to-earth attitude about everything and, to my father’s delight, she shared his views about religion. Bronia’s father, who was a socialist, ate ham, didn’t fast on Yom Kippur and had no time for rabbis, synagogues or organised religion. ‘If God really is everywhere, then people don’t need synagogues to talk to him,’ he used to say.

  My mother agreed. ‘I hate the way hypocrites go to synagogue on Yom Kippur and then sneak around the corner to smoke cigarettes. They pray on Saturdays and break the commandments on Mondays,’ she told my father. She had a definite way of stating her v
iews that he found enchanting, especially when she raised her straight black eyebrows and furrowed her ivory forehead.

  Apart from Mania, one other guest had noticed that my father had fallen in love. This was Henek’s favourite nephew Tusiek, Lunia’s son, whom he’d brought with him on holiday. Tusiek noticed that his uncle’s step had become much lighter ever since he’d met the new blonde, and that his eyes never stopped following her around the room. Although Tusiek was only fifteen, he was unusually perceptive. He had an impish wit and adored spending time with his uncle who shared his sense of humour. When Tusiek noticed how impatient my father was to get down to dinner each night, he gave his uncle a shrewd glance. ‘Uncle Henek, run for your life, ‘cos if you stay here one more day you’ve had it! You’ll chase her till she catches you!’ he teased.

  My mother revealed her unusual situation to my father soon after they met, though it wasn’t on their first date in Hel, which was a disaster. Thinking that sailing would be romantic, my father invited her for a boat trip around the peninsula, but while he was enthusing about the pretty coastline and the turquoise water, my mother’s face was turning the same colour as her eyes. She couldn’t wait to get off the boat and could feel the ground swaying under her feet for hours afterwards. All her life she was a terrible sailor. ‘Don’t talk to me about boats!’ she would shudder.

  She told him later, while they were strolling past the old fishermen’s huts on the seashore. He liked the sound of her small, energetic footsteps resounding on the long wooden pier that jutted into the Baltic Sea. While the late summer sun warmed her bare arms and the sea breeze ruffled her fine hair, she turned towards him. ‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ she said. ‘I’m married.’

  He stopped walking and they both stood looking at the iridescent sea that shimmered like taffeta all around them. ‘So where is your husband?’ he asked, a strained look around his eyes.

  ‘We’re separated,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m trying to get a divorce,’ she added and blushed, looking away from his intense blue gaze. He breathed out again. ‘I don’t know how long it will take,’ she was saying. Henek wasn’t perturbed. He’d waited a long time to find the woman he wanted to share his life with, and now that he’d found her, he could wait a little longer.

  Throughout her life, my mother kept her first marriage secret from me and I only found out about it by accident after my father’s death. While we were going through his papers, I found a yellowing Polish document at the back of a drawer. It recorded the marriage of Hirsch Baldinger and Berta Wechslerowa. I knew that Hirsch Baldinger was my father’s name before he changed it to Henryk Boguslawski, and that my mother had also changed her given name from Berta to Bronia, to sound less Jewish. But her maiden name was Bratter. So who was this Mrs Wechsler?

  My mother snatched the document out of my hand and tried to stuff it back into the drawer. Aunty Mania, who was there at the time, lit one of the low-tar cigarettes she now smoked, put her head back and blew a funnel of smoke towards the plaster rosettes on the bedroom ceiling. Happy to have a distraction, my mother grumbled, ‘Always with the cigarettes!’

  Mania rolled her eyes in my direction, and pointed to the document half sticking out of the drawer. ‘For heaven’s sake, Bronia, Diane isn’t a baby any more,’ she said.

  Speaking rapidly and avoiding my eyes as she spoke, my mother said, ‘Well, I was once married to someone else before I met Daddy. It was just a marriage on paper and that’s all.’ Then her face snapped shut, and I knew her well enough to realise that she wouldn’t say another word.

  My mind was reeling. Parents expect bombshells from their children, but no matter how old or sophisticated you are, the revelation of a parent’s secret life comes as a shock. Several years passed before she talked about this enigmatic marriage again, but I was never sure whether she’d told me the whole story. It seems she’d had a boyfriend in Lwow—Izko Liebermann—whom her parents liked. He was dynamic and extroverted but had an aggressive streak and was pathologically jealous.

  When my mother finally broke off with Izko, he stalked her and wouldn’t leave her alone. Lwow, the capital of Galicia, was a bustling university town of about 100 000 people, but it wasn’t big enough for the two of them. If she was strolling with her girlfriends along the leafy avenue leading to the opera house, he turned up with a bunch of roses. If she went for iced coffee to the Cafe de la Paix on Legionow Street with her younger sister Hania, there he was at the next table, blowing kisses. Even his parents badgered her to take him back.

  Finally my mother hit on the solution. She’d get married, but to someone else so that Izko would have to leave her alone. ‘I had another admirer, Samek Wechsler, and married him just to get rid of Izko, but it wasn’t a real marriage,’ she says. ‘He knew I didn’t love him and that I wouldn’t have anything to do with him.’ She gives me an embarrassed look. ‘You know what I mean.’ Shaking her head in wonder, she says, ‘Fancy agreeing to such a proposition!’ Fancy making it, I think.

  I know that the past is a different country, but this story mystifies me. I’m speechless at the idea of my sensible, straightforward mother being a femme fatale at the centre of all this turmoil, and concocting such a devious scheme. ‘What did your parents think about these weird goings on?’ I ask.

  She shrugs. ‘They thought that marrying Samek was a smart thing to do, otherwise Izko and his parents would never have left me alone. It worked. Izko was angry but there was nothing he could do. Samek and I were only together for three months.’

  Back in 1935 divorce was rare, so it took courage to take such a major step. There’s nothing shameful about it, and I don’t understand why she feels so embarrassed, but every life has a corner that never sees the light. Secrets contribute to our individuality and uniqueness, they define and distance us at the same time. I never asked her about this episode again. In my search for the past, am I betraying her by writing about this? But would omitting it not betray the quest? As I struggle with this problem, it strikes me that my mother, who was one of the most honest, fearless people I’ve ever known, feared only one thing: that I would think less of her if I knew that she’d been married before she met my father.

  ‘So what happened to Izko after you married Samek?’ I ask my mother the last time we talk about her mysterious marriage. By now she has a tremor which she tries to conceal by clasping her hands together under the table. She shrugs. ‘It was a big blow to him when I married Samek. Izko was too sure of himself, he wasn’t used to being turned down.’ I ask what became of them all. She raises her straight eyebrows. ‘Don’t you know what happened to the Jews in Poland?’

  When Bronia returned home from Hel, her parents met her at the door with astonished faces. ‘Who is this Henek Baldinger you met in Hel? He’s certainly a fast worker!’ her mother said, looking searchingly into her eldest daughter’s face while holding out a letter. With growing astonishment, my mother read my father’s handwriting which swept along the page revealing his determined, impetuous personality in every energetic stroke. As soon as he’d returned to Krakow, he’d written to the Bratters, asking for their daughter’s hand in marriage. ‘I can tell you, I was dumbfounded,’ my mother told me. ‘He hadn’t talked to me about getting married. I had no idea that he was going to propose so soon. The trouble was that my husband Samek didn’t want to give me a gett.’

  Now that it’s too late to ask, I wonder why Samek was relucant to divorce her since he’d agreed to this marriage of convenience. Research always starts too late and ends too soon and my questions are destined to remain unanswered.

  During their courtship, my father used to visit her every weekend. He spent most of Friday night trundling the seven hundred kilometres on the train, arrived in Lwow on Saturday, and left on Sunday. And this was the man who’d said he hadn’t fallen in love!

  My maternal grandparents were Berisch and Taube Bratter, who had Aryanised their given names to Bernard and Toni, as many Jews used to. I don’t know whether
they did it because it was a disadvantage to have Jewish names, or because many progressive city Jews associated such typically Yiddish names with backward stetls. My mother’s given name was Berta but she changed it to Bronia. Berisch was born in 1883 in the little town of Zolkwa fifty kilometres outside Lwow. When he was born, his mother Ester was fifty-two and his father had just died, so his married brother Samuel became his father figure.

  My grandmother Taube came from Budy Lancutskie where her father, Chaim Goldman, was a landowner. My grandmother must have been an unusually independent girl because at the turn of the century she left home and went to live with an uncle in Lwow. Apparently she didn’t get on with her despotic father. Chaim was an imposing figure of a man with a white beard. My mother remembered seeing him riding around his wheatfields, and the farm workers greeting him: ‘Good morning, Chaim Hil.’ It’s rare to hear of Jews in Poland being farmers, so I was fascinated to hear that my great-grandfather owned land, grew wheat, and rode around his property on horseback.

  My mother didn’t like her grandfather, a harsh despotic man who made his wife Breindl’s life miserable, and treated his children with no consideration. ‘When my mother inherited a piece of land from a relative, her father just gave it away to one of her sisters, without even telling her,’ my mother told me. ‘He didn’t care about anyone’s feelings.’ Daughters often choose husbands who resemble their fathers, but in choosing the gentle, easy-going Bernard, whom she married in 1910, my grandmother Toni had chosen a man very different from her father.

  According to my mother, her parents were opposites in character and temperament. ‘My father was very laid-back,’ she recalls. ‘When they first met, he only worked two days a week and played billiards the rest of the time. Money wasn’t important to him.’

  Toni, on the other hand, was shrewd, quick-tempered and energetic. She was the driving force behind their marriage as well as the steel business, which was located two doors away from their home in Sloneczna Street.