A month later Lidia traveled to Lodz, about 130 kilometres southwest of Warsaw, to participate in the Fourth All-Poland Esperanto Congress. It was held in 'a beautiful, great, green- ornamented hall with a large portrait of Zamenhof. Soon the room was full, with many people standing. Professor Odo Bujwid opened the congress. As the orchestra began to play La Espero, suddenly all the lights in the hall came on. As the speakers were delivering the usual greetings, the meeting was suddenly disrupted: a representative ofone of the workers' groups abruptly took the floor, greeted the audience in Polish, and, after a few insulting remarks to the 'neutral' Esperantists, sent them 'to the devil'.
But when Lidia stood up to address the audience, 'a hurricane of applause shook the hall'. 'Miss Lidia Zamenhofis already known to the Esperantists of the world as an eloquent public speaker', one person noted. 'This time she chose as her theme the symbolic fact that at the moment when the orchestra began to play our anthem, from the many lamps and chandeliers of the hall, light poured forth. A good sign, a moment of good omen. She told an allegory about the light of the Green Star and captured the green hearts of the crowd. The speech left a profound impression.'
Another remarked: 'The opening speech of Miss Zamenhof was very charming. I like very much to listen and to read the words of Miss
Lidia . . . There is always a kind of golden autumn feeling in her words and, listening to her speak about letting the light come into our Esperanto lives just as during her talk it entered the dim congress hall, I involuntarily compared such a brilliant turn of phrase with that of our chief orator, Mr Privat. But he lacks those notes of romantic melancholy which Miss Zamenhof gives to us.'
The next day, Sunday, in the rain under a forest of umbrellas, a hundred and fifty Esperantists dedicated a plaque on Zamenhof Street in the city center. The event took place in spite ofthe fact that the police had forbidden mass gatherings because it was just before an election.
By mid-October Lidia's translation of Baha'u'lldh and the New Era had not yet gone to press. Lidia had been working on correcting the proofs and was anxious to see it in print. 'I hope it will serve the Cause', she wrote Agnes Alexander inJapan.'When this letter reaches you, our dear Martha Root will be with you. I envy you for that!'
THIRTEEN
An Independent Woman
Lidia had not had any formal preparation for teaching apart from the instructor's course in the Cseh method, which she had begun to use in her Esperanto classes in Warsaw. This style of teaching was very demanding, requiring the teacher, in effect, to be on stage during the entire class, holding the students' attention like an actor. But quiet and serious Lidia Zamenhof took to it with a flair that always astonished those who watched her become transformed from a plain little sad- faced woman to a self-assured actress who made learning the international language not a chore but an entertainment. Lidia had at last found her calling. Demanding and tiring as it was, teaching Esperanto was what she wanted to do. Inquisitive journalists would often ask her why she did not marry, and Lidia would tell them that her teaching would suffer if she married. For Lidia, teaching Esperanto had become more than an occupation: it was a mission. Years later she admitted, 'It is even my recreation.'
During this period, the early 1930S, the student Esperantist group in Warsaw often called on Lidia for help in their publicity efForts. Eugen Rytenberg later recalled that audiences always listened with great attention when she spoke - 'slowly, very clearly, with a strong but at the same time gentle voice . . . She was always there when we needed her.'
Eugen Rytenberg, who was teaching Esperanto in the Warsaw State Institute for the Blind, once invited Lidia to test his pupils at the end of the elementary course. As she spoke with the new Esperantists, he could see she was a talented teacher. Afterward, he recalled, she told them an amusing little story. 'When I was a child', she said, 'I had a small lovely white cat. But my cat was not well mannered: it bit [with appropriate pantomime] and tore up my beloved doll. Then I said to it, "Listen, Kitty, I don't love you anymore, do you hear?" The cat replied, "Miaoiv-das!"' ('Mi aŭdas' means 'I hear' in Esperanto.) And the students burst into laughter.
Lidia then said to them, 'Don't you believe the cat said that?'
One of the pupils boldly replied, 'It didn't say -das.'
When she was not teaching or preparing for her classes, Lidia was working on her translations or writing. Her translation of Bahd'u'llah and the Neu> Era had been published at the end of 1930. And her stories and articles were being printed with more frequency. In 1931 the Esperanto literary journal Literatura Mondo published two short stories she had written. One was called 'Halinjo'. Unlike her usual allegories, in which she couched Esperantist or Baha'f ideas in the form of a fable, 'Halinjo' was literary fiction. Dark and rather pessimistic, it told of an innocent neglected child named Halinjo who becomes a tragic victim of her decadent parents' selfishness.
The other story was called 'La araneo' ('The Spider'). In it Lidia cast her experience in Haifa into the form of a story. She wrote of a pilgrim come from far away, hoping to find again the belief he had lost. The pilgrim is alone in the shrine. Outside, people throng; birds sing. But inside, only a colored ray of sun penetrates the arched window. Touching his forehead to the step covered with roses, the pilgrim cries 'for a sign, for some miracle . . .' In his moment of despair he sees a little spider so small it seems only a bit of dust. He flicks it away with his finger, and it tumbles from the flower but stops in midair, its fall broken by the delicate line of web. The spider scurries to hide among the roses. The pilgrim has his sign.
'Thus the heavens did not open,' she wrote, 'nor the earth tremble. Trumpets did not blow, to attest to the presence of the All-Powerful.' But the pilgrim goes back into the world 'tranquilized and confident that whoever can still find in his heart a single ray of faith, as delicate and tiny as a spider's thread, will not perish in the abyss . . .'
Pola Esperantisto had also published one of her short stories. Entitled 'Saluto al steloj' ('Greeting to the Stars'), it was almost science fiction. But instead of regarding beings from other planets as hostile, alien creatures, Lidia envisioned other worlds populated by brother-beings with whom humans must someday communicate. The hero in her story sacrifices everything he possesses - even his life - to reach out to them in one immense, blazing signal of light, even though he would never know if his message ever reached anyone.
In 1931, however, not everyone around Lidia approved of the message that she had chosen to promote, especially in public. As Lidia had continued to take part conspicuously in the Baha'f meetings at the Esperanto congresses, she had met increasing disapproval from her family and some of the Esperantists. The Twenty-Third Congress in August 1931 wastobeinKrakow, Poland. As the time for the congress approached, Lidia found herself facing opposition from none other than the congress president himself, Odo Bujwid, a professor at the University of Krakow and an eminent Esperantist who had been a friend of Lidia's father. Professor Bujwid's attitude was evidently becoming known and talked about among the Esperantists such that
Martha Root heard of it from acquaintances in Europe. '[He] does not wish a member of the Zamenhof family to take such a great part in the Baha'f Movement,' Martha wrote. 'He is afraid people will think that Esperanto is something Baha'i. Especially in the Universal Congresses of Esperanto he wishes Lidia to stop doing so much . . . Lidia is so modest, she never mentioned all this trouble, but the other Esperantists here in Europe have told me.'