Family History of Fear Page 4

  BOGDAN I

  BOGDAN

  My parents, that is to say, our home. A home should have walls enclosed by their arms, and a roof.

  I did not have parents. I do not remember them. I had a mother. I had a father. Each distinctly separate. Why can’t I see my parents with the eyes of a child? Are they too close or too distant? What keeps me from holding them close, after so many years, and inhaling our common scent? We were once a family, after all.

  Will the fact that we stopped being a family keep me from ever remembering what they were like?

  They did not like to be held by the hand, either one; nothing like that was allowed—Mama and Papa out as a family for a Sunday walk in the park. Together. Mama and Papa with a little girl in her best blue dress. She has already eaten her cotton candy and now walks quietly beside them, stealing glances first at one and then at the other to make sure they are still there, and keeps going. She is not tired. Several times she has asked them to take her hands and swing her over the puddles. It rained yesterday but that passed, and there isn’t a cloud in the sky today.

  Did we ever go on a walk like that? I cannot remember the rhythm of shared family rituals. Sundays usually frightened me a little.

  It’s easier for me to evoke my grandmother Dela, though I never met her. Or my great-grandfather Henryk. People who no longer exist allow themselves to be described, in spite of nostalgia, and that is a comfort. The living, the nearest and dearest, can cause pain, but their life inside us is not complete. It goes on, in struggle or not, with love or without it. And always with a great need for contact.

  How do I look at my parents? I look up at them, from bottom to top, like a little girl—and later, what about today?

  My father. Am I unfair to him? After all these years, am I still incapable of forgiving him? I never resigned myself to his absence.

  What am I unable to forget? That he was not by my side? He did not want to go. It wasn’t his decision, or his desire, for that matter. He was presented with a verdict. He tried to explain to his wife that they had a child. He tried to be understanding and accept that she was in love with someone else; he believed it would pass. He called on her sense of duty. He implored her.

  I knew nothing about that. And even now that I do know, it is hard to imagine. I have never seen him lose at anything. It never occurred to me that he was capable of suffering for love.

  I saw him weep just once. At the funeral of his mother, my grandma. It frightened me.

  I rarely think of him tenderly. With one exception—when I look at snapshots taken in the days when he was young and radiant, with his precious microphone in hand.

  The fact that I know now that it wasn’t his fault, that he also suffered, doesn’t make me feel better, doesn’t help. He did not know how to love his child. He didn’t know how because he didn’t know and that’s all—or else, because the mother of that little girl had betrayed him. Maybe I didn’t know how to let myself be loved.

  Maybe he did love me. Others said he actually bragged about me to them, but instead of filling me with joy, that only increased my bitterness. I already felt that when I was little. My accomplishments, which he made light of to me, were proudly displayed for others. Which of us first shut the door on the other? A door that for years was impossible to open?

  My mother, alone, leaning on me and on my life. My father, surrounded by a second family, and with two granddaughters, one from each of his new daughters, and endless projects for books about the history of sport. He never abandoned his efforts at creativity. As always, he railed against the government, against the right, against the left, against the Church, against the Jews. He railed about the lack of respect, respect that he deserved. Well deserved, because actually he had accomplished quite a lot.

  Sometimes, I can see it in him still—a brash kid from Łόdź, son of a laborer, grandson of a railroad man, who pulled himself up by the force of ambition alone. He made the decision to study journalism on his own, passed his exams alone, without anybody’s help, this street kid from Bałuty, Widzew, and Mania, after the war, after a clandestine education, after being forced to pack up and move three times, after his father walked out. Brave. Without complaining. He lived on bread with lard that his mother and his aunt brought over in earthenware jars. He was like quicksilver, bursting with energy and joy, indefatigable. Maybe that is what she loved about him, the young woman who had spent her childhood in fear.

  …

  My father, Bogdan, was baptized on August 27, 1932, in the parish of St. Joseph of Łόdź. This grandson of the Karliński family was seven weeks old at the time.

  His country was working-class Łόdź: Mania, Koziny, Bałuty.

  There are photos of little Boguś (as he was called). With a teddy bear and a ball. In the snow, smaller than a snowman. In a field, beside a cow, even smaller then. With a balloon and dressed in the traditional costume of Kraków. And the crowning event: the First Communion.

  Of his childhood, my father remembers the priests’ visits, the smell of ham cooking for Easter, from which white borscht would be made later. The priest actually came to visit after Christmas, but Bogdan swears by his memory, eliminating in one fell swoop the half year between the birth and the resurrection of Christ. Ham, white borscht, and the priest—praise the Lord.

  He remembers his father pushing him off his lap for fear of wrinkling his trousers.

  He remembers eating the sugary raisin buns. And that, later, he played goalkeeper in soccer games.

  His grandfather Jan Karliński, a railroadman with a mustache, worked or drank. At work he was punctual; dressed in a spotless uniform, he blew his whistle at the precise moment a train was to depart, just as he was supposed to. But when he got home, almost before he took off his cap, he sent his grandson out for a bottle. “Boguś,” he said, “run, fetch a halbka.” At first none of the storekeepers wanted to serve him anything—the kid was little—but then, for his grandfather’s sake, they agreed. Occasionally he brought him all sorts of things from the butcher shop: head cheese, liverwurst, smoked sausage. Grandmother Rózia drank with her husband now and then. She made herself a citron vodka, or she heated sugar in a pan and mixed it with pure alcohol. Bogdan also remembers the smell of burned sugar.

  Sometimes his grandfather played cards, but never for money. And when his colleagues came over, or the family dropped in, Rózia served sprats at fifteen pennies per can, sausage from Lithuania, pickled cucumbers, and homemade marinated mushrooms. And vodka.

  Bogdan’s mother was working at the rubber-boot factory, his father in the engine house, hired by the railroad because of his grandfather Karliński. Boguś always stayed home with his grandmother Rózia.

  Boguś remembers kindergarten. He wore a smock, the nicest in the class since his mother embroidered so prettily. And he performed in school plays. He learned poems by heart and recited them at home. He often sat at the table turning the pages of a book, pretending to read. “A handsome young page went over mountains and valleys…” And then, when he had learned to read, he read to his grandmother from his schoolbooks. She was amazed by what he could do. He loved his grandmother and treated her with respect, always kissing her hand. She not only raised him, she gave him security. She was the one who was always there for him. His grandfather traveled, his father often disappeared, and as for his mother, from the beginning he felt like he had to protect her.

  He used to play soccer for ŁKS, the sports club of Łόdź. He took part in most of the matches and some competitions. He also tried the accordion with his father’s help. At the end of August, he got ready for school.

  Shortly after that his father, Corporal Roman Tuszyński, left for the war. He was placed at the head of a squad of heavy artillery in the Kaniόw regiment and was soon taken prisoner. He sent many tender letters to his wife and his son from the stalag in the forest of Kampinos. He escaped, came home, and sought work at the engine house. He worked as a switchman through the rest of the Occupation. Sometimes h
e threw coal on the embankment for them to collect later. Sometimes he drank, and then he became argumentative.

  Roman’s mother, Maria Paulina, née Hausman, my great-grandmother, of Austrian origin, declared herself German without a moment’s hesitation. She registered herself as such on the Reichsliste. She left Łόdź for Sompolno, where she became part of the local German elite. Her grandson spent his vacations there. Boguś, the son of her only beloved son, was her great favorite. She pleased him in every way she could; she cooked following recipes in books. To this day, my father remembers the pigeon broth she made for him during the Occupation, with little dumplings, as an utmost delicacy. Grandfather Andaszek, Maria Paulina’s second husband, used to take him fishing on the banks of the river nearby. As if there were no war.

  Roman Tuszyński knew German, which he’d learned at home, but he did not sign up for the Reichsliste. In any case, as an employee of the railroad, he was entirely dependent on the German administration. He had been a September soldier, fighting on the front lines during the German invasion of September 1939, and felt Polish. When the Resistance blew up railroad lines and electrical towers, Roman was there.

  Bogdan remembers the German woman who owned the boardinghouse in Sompolno, and a Gestapo officer who lived there too. He liked to listen to the conversations of the officer’s two sons: they had both fought on the front. They talked endlessly about the power of the Reich. When they went to the local baths to ogle the girls, Bogdan tagged along. The sons did not survive Stalingrad. Bogdan’s Jewish friends from Sompolno had disappeared earlier.

  In Łόdź, life at his grandparents’ house was nothing like it used to be. Bogdan began to be afraid. He was frightened because his grandfather had been taken prisoner, and then they took Aunt Stefa away to work in Germany. He was frightened because they buried the radio in the garden. He was frightened because the Gestapo kept hunting men down.

  And then, his father got involved in the black market. He made deliveries, tossing merchandise from the train at drop points like water reservoirs. He made a business out of selling goods like lard and moonshine while he traveled. He began to handle huge sums of money. Sometimes Bogdan helped him sell certain goods. Or else, the boy went with his mother to fetch bolts of cloth that she bought from a friend at cost. She would sit at the kitchen table, cutting the fabric into sections and then wrapping as much of it around Roman’s torso as he could conceal. He wore baggy coats and carried canvas bags with false bottoms. In these ways, they managed more or less to survive.

  …

  Bogdan, my father, was about ten years old when he began to take courses clandestinely from Professor Kowalski of the middle school run by the Bernardine order. The professor worked days in the accounting department of a factory; at the end of each day he taught just a few students. They got together at different houses in turn. There was always a lookout stationed in the street in case the police showed up.

  Bogdan studied his own language in secret. He played sports in secret. He waited for the war to end. As soon as it did, in 1945, he entered the Bernardines’ high school, at 73 Sporna Street, as a freshman.

  He remembers his mother at that time, her face pale, her body skinny, her hair gray despite the fact that she was only thirty-six years old. She had just given birth to another son, Włodek, a little brother. She was still nursing him. But she was so frail; she looked like she was going to shatter at any moment. Scrawny and dispirited. She went to visit Bogdan at Boy Scout camp during his first vacation after the war, and she burst out crying when they went for a walk together. She sobbed openly in front of him, even though he was only thirteen. She cried while she told him that she and his father weren’t getting along.

  He knew it. He suddenly had the image right before his eyes of all those nights she had spent waiting for his father. Yards of thread crisscrossed on her lap like a multicolored spider’s web, and she spent long minutes interweaving them with a mechanical gesture, half hours, hours. She said nothing; her right hand moved more and more quickly, weaving knot after knot. Roman would go out for cigarettes or bread and would come back days later. Sometimes he justified it; sometimes he offered no explanation at all. She let herself be deceived.

  …

  Right after the Liberation, Roman Tuszyński presented himself at the national railroad’s security services in the “recovered territories.” He was promoted to lieutenant. He had always loved the uniform, the boots polished to a high sheen, the reflection of himself in the mirror with the pistol on his belt. He left the house without looking back, but his wife could not resign herself to the fact of having lost him. She took her sons and got on a train for Szczecin. Somewhere near Piła, some drunken Soviet soldiers burst into the compartment. They saw the mother. Bogdan had never screamed like that before. He was a teenager and felt responsible for her. He always had.

  Nobody was waiting for them at the station. They went to the right address, but his father wouldn’t open the door. They spent a long time in the stairway. Perfect strangers walked right by them. Finally a woman came out of their father’s apartment. My grandmother did everything possible to keep the family from breaking up, but things never worked out, then and there or later. Even though Roman earned a good living, she needed to work. She sewed badges on uniforms for the army. She ran a shop. In the street, she always had a dog with her, a German shepherd. In Jelenia Gόra, where she followed her husband yet again, another empty bedroom was waiting for her. That, plus Roman returning at dawn, smelling of liquor and perfume, and humiliation. One fine day, coming home from school, Bogdan found his mother lying prone on the floor of the enormous bathroom dating from the days of the Germans. All that blood. Where did it all come from? So black. Two razor blades. Ambulance and hospital. They saved her.

  After the war, they were all on the make. That is what defined my father in any case. Starving for everything, especially education and sports. He was already playing soccer before the war. Afterward, he joined the team at school in Łόdź, where he showed considerable talent as a goalkeeper. He had excellent reflexes and was good at blocking shots. He boxed a little, too. He was thin. He weighed 122 pounds, was classed as a featherweight. He had a total of nine fights and won eight of them. His right jab knocked more than one of them to the ground. Or so he says now.

  In the succession of schools he attended, he started a series of small newspapers that he edited himself. He reported the events of school life. He pored over Przegląd Sportowy (Sports Review)—the only magazine devoted entirely to sports—and went to all the games. At the boxing championship of 1946, someone pointed out an elegant gentleman with a hat and walking stick. It was the journalist Kazimierz Gryżewski. Several days later, Bogdan sent him a letter: “Dear Sir. I saw you at the boxing championship match. I’m passionately interested in sports and would like very much to make writing about them my profession. How does one go about that?”

  The reply came in one of Gryżewski’s columns in the paper. “Bogdan Tuszyński, Łόdź, 4 Perłowa Street. Kindly take up this subject in person with the editor, Wiesław Kaczmarek, Kurier Popularny, on the corner of Piotrkowska Street and Moniuszko Street.”

  He was so overwhelmed by this response that when he went to the meeting, he took his mother along. He was fourteen. He was given his first assignment right then and there: to write a report on boxing matches for young people. Of the six pages he turned in, only one remained after editing. This was his initiation into journalism and the beginning of his association with the Kurier, under the watchful eye of editor Kaczmarek, his first mentor.

  He felt tied to Łόdź, his parents’ town, the same Red working-class city where barricades went up in 1905. He thought of Łόdź proudly as a city throbbing with socialist life where everyone—the son of a worker, like the son of a peasant—had his place. He had faith in a bright tomorrow because now the state officially recognized the rights of those who had never had any before. His grandmother and his aunt, who both had to go to work when they we
re young, could get an education now. Enthusiastically he supported the campaign against illiteracy and for the propagation of knowledge.

  In 1949, they needed a new sports reporter for the radio and set up a public audition. His colleagues pushed him to try out for the job. He had a way of describing a match that always made it sound interesting, they said. The jury acknowledged his obvious intelligence and experience in the field. But they rejected his application because of his voice, which was pitched too high, according to them, completely wrong for the radio. One year later, he graduated from high school.

  On his final report card, he had practically nothing but high grades, “good” and “very good.” He got “fair” only twice—in Polish and biology.

  His father did not congratulate him. Not then and not later. The man never said a kind word to him about anything.

  His mother wanted him to become a doctor, an obstetrician most of all, because, now that the war was over, a lot of children were going to be born. He had just about decided to apply for a degree in maritime commerce at the college in Sopot. But on the train going home one evening, he read about the opening of a journalism department at the University of Warsaw. He simply had to try.

  He traveled to Warsaw. Someone gave him directions from the station to the university. He walked there. Between examinations, he slept under the piano in the big gym of the students’ residence, on Narutowicz Square. He did not know a single person in town. He was eighteen years old, in a hand-me-down suit designed for a railwayman, much too hot for August. He had a small wooden cross and a jar of lard that his mother had given him for the trip. He also had a will of iron and many dreams.

  In his application for the admissions office, he chose journalism as his major. He filled in the part of the form reserved for his background as follows: “I am Polish by birth, a Polish citizen. My mother tongue is Polish.” He signed the form with a flourish, underlining his signature with a stroke of the pen. Beneath the signature appears a single word: “Accepted.”