Then she added, “They steal.”
When Mother returned home I did not tell her that I had visited the bearded Jews.
I tell her very little these days, for I feel that her thoughts are elsewhere, and I repeatedly ask myself what she could be hiding from me. Sometimes it seems to me that she is drawing close to people whom she knew many years ago, but other times this impression recedes, and I see that her life is now free of Father's terror. Her gestures are more fluid, and she speaks freely, giving examples that make things understandable.
That evening I asked Mother, “Can I say that I'm a Jew?”
“To whom?”
“At the candy store.”
“They know.”
At night I dreamed that the bearded Jews tied me up me in the synagogue. I saw Halina and shouted for help, but she was clasped in her fiancé's embrace and didn't notice me. With all my might, I tried to free myself from my captors, but my arms were heavy, paralyzed. I awoke from sheer terror.
“What happened, my love?” Mother awoke, too.
“I was dreaming.”
“Just disregard it,” she said, as if it were unimportant, immediately falling back to sleep.
15
One evening a tall, blond man appeared at the door and Mother went to greet him. The man stared at me without saying a word. Mother's face filled with light and they began talking animatedly, as if they had known each other for a long time. I had never seen her speak to a strange man with such ease. They talked about school and about another man named Karol, a music teacher who was apparently rather stupid. I understood every word, and yet still the words seemed strange to me.
Only after they had spoken and laughed and made fun of Karol did Mother turn toward me and say, “This is André—he's the gym teacher at school.” She wanted to show me off and said, impulsively, “Paul is already learning fractions, and he'll start percentages soon.” André wrote an exercise for me, but I got muddled and it came out wrong, embarrassing both Mother and myself. Mother said, “He usually gets it right.”
“Never mind, it happens,” said André, rather tensely and without conviction.
I noticed that his blond hair was long, all the way down to his nape, and that his blue eyes had a cold glimmer to them. Mother was animated and laughing. Not since our vacation in the country had I seen her laugh like that.
“How old are you?” He turned to me.
I told him.
I was disappointed and angry that Mother was so very lively and so engaged in their conversation. I didn't say anything. I had already learned not to reveal my thoughts. A carefully guarded thought can be a pleasant secret.
I sat and looked at them for quite a while. Eventually I got tired of André's smooth face and sat down on the floor and played cards. Nothing is more enjoyable than cards. I pricked up my ears to catch what Mother was saying. She was using words she did not ordinarily use, such as “cutie” and “sweetie.” I didn't like those words. I played a few more games and then I fell asleep. Beyond my sleep, I heard them chattering away happily and wanted to listen, but I was overcome with exhaustion.
The following day Mother got up late and rushed off to school. Her haste brought to mind André's smooth face and blond hair, and a wave of anger swept over me.
“How are you?” Halina asked when she arrived.
“André visited us,” I told her.
“And what's he like?”
“Not that nice.”
“But good-looking?”
“Not good-looking,” I was about to say.
Then she said, “Your mother may be in love with him.”
“Why do you say that?”
“That's how it seems to me.”
Halina heard and knew everything. She knew that Mother and Father divorced because Father was deeply depressed and addicted to alcohol, and that now he had also stopped making his alimony payments. I also knew that Mother and Father had divorced, but I didn't say this out loud. It seemed to me that this was a word that should not be spoken out loud.
“So, is André going to marry Mother?” The question popped out of my mouth.
“Possibly.”
“Then I'll have a stepfather.”
Halina told me something that surprised me. Her father, who had been so cruel to her, died when he was still young, and her mother married again. It turned out that the stepfather was more easygoing than her natural father. He simply ignored her. Halina often told me secrets from her own life. At seventeen there was already a lot of life in her body: rage at her dead father and scorn for her mother; while it was true that her mother didn't beat her with a belt, she would lash Halina with her tongue. “Sometimes the tongue hurts more than the strap,” Halina told me.
Every word that came out of Halina's mouth went straight into me. I didn't always completely understand what she was saying, but I easily absorbed the sense of it, and at night when I was in bed I heard her voice and felt the touch of her hand.
My talks with Mother were now short and abrupt, and left nothing within me. She did not ask me very much, and I didn't ask her anything. It was as if our talks had been extinguished. Even at night, when I lay down next to her, I didn't think of her. I curled up in the corner of the bed, and whenever she touched me a shiver went down my back. Before I shut my eyes, Mother would ask me: “Wouldn't you like to go to school?”
“No.”
“You won't be able to study in the high school.”
“I don't care.”
16
Halina also said that Mother had changed. She thought she was head over heels in love. I'd already noticed that Halina might not always have been sensitive, but her instincts were extremely sharp. She knew when it was going to rain and which birds forewarn of it. She once said, “It's not rain that will fall but hail.” And she was right.
“What is love?” I asked her.
“Kissing,” she said, and laughed.
“And what else?”
“You're still a child, you're too young to know.”
“Tell me a bit.”
“Well, you take off your clothes.”
I saw Mother naked on our vacation. The lake was screened by dense foliage and we were alone. At first I was afraid of the quiet and of the gray water, but the moment we took off our clothes and immersed ourselves in the water, the fear receded. Toward evening we would get out and wrap ourselves up in large towels, shivering from the cold. Blueberry bushes grew along the road to our small house in the village, and we feasted on them, getting all stained.
I told Halina about that long, sweet summer. She listened and said, “We weren't taken on vacation. We started working when we were young.”
I was sorry I had told her.
Later, I cried without knowing why. Halina asked me again and again, “Why are you crying?” I didn't know what to tell her. To cheer me up, she dressed me in my sailor outfit and we went out for a walk. Along the way, too, the tears welled up, but I kept them in.
Halina said to me, “You mustn't cry.”
“Why?”
“Because it hurts more.”
I think that she was right.
Now I was in no doubt: Mother was in love. Halina kept saying, “Your mother is in love.” Perhaps she didn't mean to hurt me, but it did hurt. Mother was blossoming. I saw her happiness and my heart bled. André came again at night and Mother went out to meet him. He gave me another math exercise and again I became confused. Had it been in my power I would have thrown him out. Because I couldn't do that, I sat on the floor and played cards.
I woke up in the middle of the night and looked for Mother, but she wasn't next to me.
“Mother!” I called. Her side of the bed was a dark pit. I got up and went to the window. Trees rustled in the thick darkness. “Mother!” I called again and again, but she did not answer even this. The tears were about to burst out from within me, but I held them in. I remembered what Halina had taught me, and I curled up inside the blankets and pillows. “Mother loves André more than me,” I murmured, choking back the tears. “I will never forget this betrayal, not even when I'm grown up.”