Mosaic Page 17

  Daniel watched admiringly while Lieba served apricot cake. Loyal, dependable and as efficient as ever, she still ran the household like clockwork and remembered what each one of them liked. He glanced at Karola, holding the floor with one of her lively anecdotes. ‘Before they let me train as a gym teacher, I had to pass a fitness test, but the course was so tough, it’s a wonder I didn’t have a heart attack!’ Although Daniel listened far more than he spoke, his attentive manner made him part of the conversation. He enjoyed having the family around him and regretted that his two youngest sons lived so far away in Paris.

  The year before, Janek had made one of his rare visits, but it was fraught with tension and had prompted Lieba to comment that small children tug at your apron strings but big children tug at your heart strings. Janek had come to ask his father’s consent to marry a young Frenchwoman. Although Rolande Guyot had been a devout Catholic, she had converted to Judaism. For one thing, she regarded religions as different paths leading to the same creator, and for another, she was so much in love with this handsome, debonair and witty man that she would have walked through fire if he was on the other side. Rolande’s father was the famous sculptor Georges Lucien Guyot, whose massive bronze lions still embellish the Trocadero in Paris. Monsieur Guyot wrote to Daniel, saying that he’d consented to his daughter’s conversion and her marriage, and he hoped that Monsieur Baldinger would do the same.

  Enclosed inside his letter was a certificate from a French rabbi who confirmed Rolande’s conversion and recommended that the marriage should proceed. But according to my cousin Adam, who heard this story from his father Avner, Daniel wrote back to say that he didn’t consider it appropriate for a rabbi to recommend that his son marry a woman who wasn’t Jewish by birth.

  Displeased with his reply, the Paris Rabbinate wrote to the Chief Rabbi of Krakow saying that once someone has converted, they cannot be refused. Daniel was then summoned by the Chief Rabbi who made it clear that the Krakow Rabbinate expected him to consent to the marriage. As always, Daniel was graceful in defeat. In a telegram she sent off to her brother in Paris, Lunia wired: ‘Parents give their consent to the Rabbi’s request.’ In a moving letter Daniel wrote to Avner, he asked his eldest son to represent him at the wedding in August 1938, as he was too old to make such a long journey. Quoting the story of Ruth the Moabite from the Torah, Daniel requested that Rolande be received warmly and whole-heartedly into the Baldinger family.

  After lunch, when all the young people had left, Daniel looked fondly at Lieba having one of her brief catnaps in the chair. Any moment now she’d open her eyes, fully awake, and say, ‘I feel as if I’ve slept for hours!’ They’d share a few more happy years together, God willing.

  Several weeks later, when Czechoslovakia was about to be sacrificed on the altar of allied appeasement, and the death knell for Europe had begun, Daniel and Lieba travelled to the little Polish spa town of Iwonicz for a holiday, eager to breathe country air again and soak their tired limbs in mineral baths. Even though the guesthouse was kosher, Daniel had brought his own salt shaker in case the owner forgot to keep condiments for milschich and fleischich dishes separate.

  They spent several pleasant days taking the cure and strolling in the gardens which bloomed with late summer roses. In spite of the warm weather, Daniel complained of feeling cold, and when his warm dressing gown didn’t stop the shivering, Lieba borrowed a hot-water bottle from one of the guests. The following day, when she wanted to return it, however, she was told that the woman had left suddenly because she felt ill.

  When they returned to Krakow, Daniel felt worse. His muscles ached and he felt exhausted, but when Rosh Hashana dawned, he insisted on attending the synagogue service. Looking at his pale face and lacklustre eyes, Lieba followed him around, grumbling and nagging that he should stay home. She had to help him knot the striped tie over the stiff white collar and pull on his cutaway jacket, and when he was ready, she noticed that the silk top hat had become too big and accentuated the pallor of his face and the shadows under his eyes. ‘You shouldn’t go out,’ she insisted, but to no avail. At Rosh Hashana, it was decided who would live and who would die. It was unthinkable not to attend that solemn service, not to watch the cantor’s cheeks puff out with the effort of blowing the ram’s horn, and then hear the thrilling fanfare which signified the hope of redemption and the start of a new year.

  But when he returned home, he went straight to bed. As usual, Lunia took charge. ‘We must send for the best doctor,’ she pronounced.

  After placing his wooden stethoscope against the patient’s chest and examining his coated tongue, the professor closed the bedroom door quietly and stepped into the living room where tense faces awaited his diagnosis. ‘Your husband has typhoid fever,’ he told Lieba. ‘Make sure that he rests and drinks plenty of water. I’ll return tomorrow with an injection.’

  Lieba clucked her tongue in distress. ‘He must have caught it in Iwonicz when he borrowed that woman’s hot-water bottle.’

  When injections of saline and glucose didn’t help, the doctor tried camphor and caffeine to stimulate Daniel’s heartbeat. On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement on which he had always fasted, for once Daniel allowed a little fluid to go down his parched throat.

  During the Yom Kippur service, Fridzia prayed fervently as never before, tears flowing down her plump cheeks. ‘I’ll never ever do anything mean again, just let Father get well,’ she promised.

  Sukkoth, the harvest festival, had begun but Daniel was deteriorating and his weakened body was now racked by hiccups which gave him no peace. ‘Is it Hoshana Raba yet?’ he asked Fridzia through fever-scabbed lips when he felt her soft gaze resting on his face. Hoshana Raba, the seventh day of Sukkoth, has a mystical religious significance because it offers universal salvation.

  ‘Not yet,’ she replied.

  ‘The souls of those who die on Hoshana Raba go straight to heaven without being judged,’ he told her in a hoarse whisper. Tears welled in her brown eyes. In the bedroom on Sebastiana Street where she herself had been born, the forces of life and death were locked in a struggle which only one could win.

  The following day, as the family sat around him, the bed suddenly made a loud crack, as if it had snapped in two. Lieba’s head swivelled towards her daughter, terror in her eyes. ‘Did you hear that sound?’ she asked. Fridzia nodded, her mouth too dry to speak. ‘It’s a premonition of death, it means that the end is near,’ her mother said.

  While Daniel was clinging to life by sheer effort of will, Neville Chamberlain was signing the Munich agreement. On the day when the fate of Czechoslovakia and the western world had been sealed, my grandfather recited the Shema, the Jew’s affirmation of faith in one God. ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.’ With these words, the last breath left his body.

  It was Hoshana Raba.

  Karola crumpled and slid onto the floor in a faint while Lunia tore her hair and shook with loud, despairing sobs. ‘Tatunciu,’ she sobbed. ‘Tatunciu.’ For the first time in Fridzia’s life, her brother Izio put his arms around her. When she glanced up at Jerzy, she saw that tears as big as peas were rolling down his face although he wept without making a sound. ‘There are moments in life that are carved into your memory and this was one of them,’ she tells me, wiping her own tears with a big handkerchief.

  After fifty years Uncle Izio’s voice quavers when he recalls his father’s body laid out on the floor. The scene which he witnessed remains indelibly etched in his memory, and even at the age of ninety he can’t talk about it without breaking down. Inside his modest flat in Los Angeles, my uncle stares into the distance and I can tell that he has the scene in front of his eyes as he speaks.

  ‘When my father died, the Chassids in their long black coats and big hats came in, lit candles and placed them around his body. Then they said prayers to honour him because he was a member of the Chevra Kadisha. I was too upset to stay and watch, but I heard them chanting and praying for a long time.’ Suddenly a
wily smile brightens my uncle’s morose face. ‘But the most interesting story of all, I can’t tell you,’ he says.

  ‘What story? Why can’t you tell me?’ I ask.

  He wags a bony forefinger at me. ‘Don’t be so curious!’ he says, delighted with his secret. I hate it when he plays these perverse games, but at least this time he’s talking about the past, because a year ago he was so agitated that he refused to tell me anything at all.

  Finally he relents and tells me his secret. Several years after his father’s death the undertaker told him that Daniel had asked to be buried in the same grave as Lieba’s grandfather who had died back in 1872. By the time Daniel died in 1938, a new Jewish cemetery had been consecrated and the old one in Miodowa Street was no longer being used, but they gave special permission to open the family grave in the cemetery where the Spira family have been buried for three hundred years.

  Fascinated by the conversation, Uncle Izio’s daughter widens her eyes in astonishment. My cousin Lee, an attractive woman in her forties, has finely chiselled features and a crisp, no-nonsense manner. Her days are divided between chauffering her two teenage children and taking care of her frail parents. Eyes blazing with indignation, she turns to her father. ‘I was in Krakow two years ago, but you didn’t tell me anything about a family grave. If I’d known, I would have gone to see it!’ I’m amazed to learn that she knows nothing about her father’s past or about her grandparents either.

  Uncle Izio’s lips quiver with emotion. ‘You’ll never be able to understand,’ he says. ‘Never. My father weighed me down with hundreds of religious rules. You can’t possibly understand what a strain that was. What does she need it for? I don’t even want her to hear any of this.’

  Lee flushes and her topaz-coloured eyes spark with anger. ‘All my life he’s kept the past a secret from me. Okay, I’ll leave the room so I won’t hear anything about it,’ she retorts and stalks out, banging the door behind her.

  Her father’s pained eyes follow her. ‘Why did she go so suddenly?’ he wants to know, but before I can explain, he shakes his head. ‘To this day I wash my hands hundreds of times because that’s what my father taught me. After I touch my hair I must wash my hands, when I sneeze I must say a prayer, when I see a rainbow I’m supposed to recite a benediction. To this day the rules buzz around in my head and drive me mad. I didn’t want her to be burdened with all this superstition.’ He’s looking forlornly at the closed door. ‘And now she’s angry with me.’

  At the graveside, one by one, Daniel’s sons, brothers and sons-in-law threw earth onto the coffin and winced as it struck the simple wooden casket. Swaying back and forth, the Chassids intoned the ancient prayers for the dead. ‘The time is short, the labour is great, and the Master of the House is waiting. It is not your duty to finish the task but neither are you free to desist from it.’

  There remained one final prayer to be said. Uncle Izio looks pensive. ‘Life is so ironic. My father divorced his first wife because he wanted a son to say Kaddish for him when he died. Finally he had six sons but only three of us came to the funeral. Avner was in Antwerp, and Jean and Marcel were in Paris. And those of us who did come didn’t say Kaddish for him the way he wanted it said, every day for a year. We recited it once at the funeral and that was all. There’s an ironic half smile on Uncle Izio’s face. ‘It seems to me that my father wasn’t meant to have children. You can’t cheat destiny.’

  Half a century after my grandfather’s funeral, I stand on the withered leaves of the cemetery whose tombstones are sinking into the decaying loam. The canopy of chestnut trees allows so little light to filter through that leaves rot on the overgrown paths and a musty smell, the smell of death, rises from the ground. An air of reproach emanates from these sagging stones. This cemetery was desecrated by the Germans who smashed most of the gravestones and carted them away to pave roads. Big raindrops patter on the splayed leaves and slide down the family memorial as I read the inscription.

  Here lies a man who walked a straight path.

  Beloved by all and kind to his fellow creatures

  He arrived early and stayed late at the house of study

  A lifelong student of the Torah

  He worked diligently and faithfully

  And his hand was always open to the poor.

  Daniel Baldinger of blessed memory.

  Passed away with a good name on Hoshana Raba 21 Tishri 1938

  May he rest in peace.

  A few weeks after Daniel died, the sound of glass shattering in Berlin resounded all over Europe and heralded the beginning of a reign of terror unequalled in the history of mankind. It’s true that the Almighty hadn’t granted Daniel’s fervent wish for devout sons who would say Kaddish for him, but God must have loved my grandfather after all, because he gathered him up before Poland became a charnel house and the way of life he loved so much had vanished forever.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 12

  Not a single breeze cooled the sultry September heat and my father’s shirt clung damply to his body as he limped along a road jammed with people fleeing from Krakow. He was already regretting his decision to leave. It would be impossible to reach Lwow at a time when the country was being mobilised and trains had been commandeered by the army. Desperate civilians had paid exorbitant sums to hire cars, carts and horse waggons, and there wasn’t a single wheel left for sale or hire.

  Swept along by the throng, my father felt like a single cell in a huge organism pushed by forces outside its control. The sun beat down on exhausted parents dragging whimpering children, on unshaven men pushing barrows and perspiring women clutching unwieldy bundles. Babies wailed, dogs barked, carts clattered, waggons rumbled, and wherever Henek looked, a mass of humanity surged along the road. What had made him think that he could walk seven hundred kilometres to Lwow with his stiff leg? As his well-worn leather suitcase with the ridged handle dragged on his right arm, he changed hands yet again and wished that he hadn’t succumbed to the general panic when Colonel Umiastowski had ordered men of military age to leave Krakow and head east.

  In the turmoil over his decision, only one thought consoled him: that Bronia had refused to leave with him. This was no journey for a woman with a new baby. As he hobbled along, his thoughts drifted to his tiny daughter who was only six weeks old. I was born under the astrological sign of Cancer, but it should have been during the transit of Mars because shortly after my birth German tanks rolled into Poland and World War II began. The miracle was that I was born at all, because my father had decided not to have any children. He felt that he hadn’t received enough love and attention from his own parents and had no desire to inflict unhappiness on his own offspring.

  There was another reason too. From the moment he and my mother had married in 1936, the spectre of war had haunted eastern Europe. It wasn’t right to bring children into the world at a time like this, he argued. My mother Bronia, on the other hand, couldn’t wait to have children and peered longingly into every pram she passed. ‘One child isn’t going to change the course of history,’ she used to tell him in her matter-of-fact way. As it turned out, she was mistaken, because having me did affect their history. Many years later she told me that if it hadn’t been for me, they may not have found the strength to cling to life during the years when every day of their existence was as precarious as treading a tightrope.

  When they were first married, my mother went along with my father’s ideas about children in that resolute nonconfronting way of hers, but when the biological urge grew too strong, she just did what nature intended. The deciding factor was my cousin Fredzio, without whom, she later told me, I would never have been born. When my father’s sister Andzia went away for a holiday and left Fredzio in my mother’s care, she became besotted with his melting eyes of celestial blue, his fair curls, affectionate nature, and astonishing memory. At the age of two he knew every make of car and could identify them at a glance. Perhaps I absorbed my mother’s love for him while I was still in the w
omb because throughout our lives there has been a powerful bond between my cousin Fredzio and me which even forty years of separation did not weaken.

  When Andzia returned from her holiday and took her little son home, my mother’s apartment felt as lifeless as a tomb and she knew she couldn’t live without a child of her own. She was then in her late twenties and her biological clock was hammering. By this time she’d already been pregnant and had an abortion. This fact slipped out accidentally, many decades later, amid great embarrassment because she was very reticent about revealing anything in her life that deviated from the perfect picture she presented of herself.

  So when this story spilled out, and it was too late to kick it back into the dark closet of life’s secrets, her cat-green eyes darted sideways and an embarrassed expression pulled her mouth into a straight line. ‘I didn’t want to have a baby so soon after I got married, that’s all,’ she said curtly. Whether she had an abortion because she thought tongues might wag if she had a baby so soon after getting married, or because my father didn’t want to have a child at that time, I never found out.

  It’s ironic that my father, the son of a man who’d been desperate to have children, was equally determined not to have any. Ironic, too, that he married a woman whose need for a baby echoed his own father’s yearning. I don’t know whether my father gave in, or whether my mother simply took matters into her own hands and faced him with a foetus accompli, but in the darkening autumn of 1938, while Daniel lay dying, my own life began to form.