“Oil!”—a sudden illumination. After all, I like oil. Well, yes. If only I’d known it was oil it wouldn’t have been revolting.
Once, we had a lot of water in the cellar. Even in the kettle. Stacha was pouring something. Swen came in. With a small bottle.
“May I have some?” he asked, as if the answer were obvious.
“No… no…!” Something had gotten into Stacha all of a sudden.
“Oh, excuse me…” Swen retreated.
“No. Why don’t you go for water yourself, just like everyone else does?”
Swen remembers that to this day. Perhaps he’s right. Because in those evil days Roman brought me a small but real little loaf of bread. Rye.
“Here.” He put it down. I took it. How amazed I was. And touched. After all, I’ve remembered that about him for so many years. And that’s why he lived with me after the war. Because of that loaf of bread, I think. So one shouldn’t be surprised at Swen. Although Stacha wasn’t at all mean. She was just in such a mood…
Exactly. It was a question of moods. I return to the stove. The clay one. When we were there in a group. Cooking time. Zocha was taking care of things. Setting things out. She was angry at something. At Father. Or at me. Usually she was kind to me (after the war, too). Even splendid. But suddenly she was furious. And said something. About my mother. Who, after all — as I found out later — was dismantling a barricade and was herded with Stefa and Aunt Józia between those piles of corpses. And then Pruszków. Stefa disappeared at one point. She bought her way out (obviously, not as a Jew, but like so many people). Then came a transport. To Głogów. In Głogów they met Michał. Who had parted with Nanka in Leszno. And didn’t know her address. Only through the family from Skarżysko. But after her return Nanka was living with Sabina. Michał came. She didn’t want to be with him. It’s over! No! In the end she gave in. But what? What was that about? Well, at one point — bombs are falling, the Germans are invading, they’re slaughtering people there — and he (I don’t know why) says to her, out loud, in the cellar: “Damn you, I hope the first bomb kills you!”
And Nanka immediately walked out to the Germans.
Well, let’s get back to Zocha. At the stove. Something stupid in connection with Father. Against Mother. Just to hurt him.
“After all, she was living with your father.” She said that to Dad.
“How’s that?” I reacted abruptly.
“What do you mean, how’s that? Didn’t she used to sit on her father-in-law’s knee?”
Now I. Unnecessarily. Spat. And kicked the stove. It collapsed. There was a short silence. Then Zocha rebuilt the stove. Like new. It didn’t make any impression on anyone. That the stove was smashed. Because — which time was this? At once there was an effort at glossing over. Then conversation. Already something like conversation. Probably I felt stupid the longest. Mama is Mama. But I know why Zocha said that. It didn’t mean anything. We talked with each other once, twice. Normally. And the next day I don’t think there was any trace left. Except that I felt stupid.
I’ll add yet another mood. Before the uprising. In ’41. When Father sometimes still spent the night at 99 Leszno. (Because we were living there at the time. With Nanka and Michał.) A return to the place of my birth. Snow was falling. It was morning. Zocha came. Mother wasn’t home. Zocha had checked that out. Father was lying in bed. Zocha didn’t know that. In the front room. I was sitting by myself in the kitchen.
Knock knock! Nanka opens the door.
“Excuse me, is Zenek here?” Zocha asks.
I quickly close the door to the front room. Before Zocha can see. And I stay in the room. I see. Father is terrified. He’s sweating. Nanka is saying something. “No!” Father covers himself. “He’s not here.” Zocha asks something else. In a normal voice. Nanka says something else. In a normal voice. I think she still wasn’t thinking about what she was going to do. But already her voice was changing.
“After all. What are you doing here? By what right?” And she grabs a brush. On a stick. Zocha’s out the door. Nanka after her. “Get the hell out of here!”
And we can hear — bang! Then they were surprised. The neighbors. Because they overheard from the hall. Pani Bachmanowa. With her thick lips. With a mane of hair. Whom I called King Sigismund the Old. Said, “Nanka? Look at yourself… Nanka…?”
Nanka used to be considered. And is still considered. The height of gentleness. Because that’s what she’s like. Nanka is an angel. But sometimes something gets into angels, too.
But fate is also sly.
It is 1945. Zocha came back from Austria. Through Czechoslovakia. On foot. With a cart. Writing a diary. For the time being she is living with us. On Poznańska Street. I brought her wood every day. Boards from apartment houses. She did the cooking. As during the uprising. And everything was good.
It was the first Corpus Christi. I was sleeping. Morning. I heard through my sleep. Something. Someone. I woke up.
“Nanka?” I jumped up. To greet her.
Zocha, in the meantime, is preparing breakfast.
“Here… please eat…” She offers some to Nanka.
And after all, they hadn’t seen each other. Since that brush.
Well, Głogów. The one from history. From Krzywousty.[25] Mama is there. Michał. At work on the earthworks. Nanka walked thirty kilometers on foot each day — fifteen there and fifteen back. To work. And from work. In wooden clogs. Through snow. Over hills. And she returned full of energy. Even though in the old days she used to go to the Comet on Chłodna Street and walk and walk until she’d say, “Och, my shoes are pinching me!” And then she wouldn’t go any farther.
So was a war necessary for that? And an uprising? And moving people around? For those vice-versa brushes, for magnanimous gestures? I don’t know. They don’t know either. Before this, a long long time ago, Mama also went every so often to check up on Father. Once, he was coming out of Zocha’s hallway. And said he wasn’t coming from her. Then he had another scene — from Zocha. Because Mama was there. After the war, when Mama was already Pani Piekutowa. Even earlier, in fact. Zocha told me. Once, twice, a third time: “Your mother is a saintly lady…”
And Sabina told me: “So? Your mother ought to treat her to vodka now.”
And both of them, Sabina and Mama, said, “He ought to marry her now. After seventeen years!”
He came back to Warsaw, because in 1945 he went to Gdańsk with Zocha. He married Wala. Nanka and Sabina came for the wedding. But not after that. And they were his sisters. They visited Mama. Mama visited them. Not so long ago Zocha got married. How pleased she was! Father saw her. They wished each other well.
Let us return now to the flow of our story. After September 20. When it was becoming more difficult to wash. Because it was a long way to go for water. Our beards were growing. And growing. Tufts of hair. So when I heard unexpectedly about a barber on Wilcza, on our side of the street, three or five houses down, I began dreaming about a haircut, a shave.
“How much does he charge?”
“One hundred złotys.”
I was surprised that those hundred złotys were worth anything to him. Even before, they were worth so little. In general, that he was charging. Or taking customers.