Let Me Tell You a Story Read online




  I dedicate this book to my husband, Bruce,

  my daughters, Sarah and Kay, and the rest of my family

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Author’s Note

  A Note on the Author

  Chapter One

  September 1939. 10, Jagiellońska Street, Przemyśl

  ‘Wake up, Renata! Wake up!’ Mamusia’s voice was urgent.

  I turned over and started to pull the covers over my head. I didn’t want to get up. I wanted my mother to go away and leave me alone. But Mamusia was already wrapping me up in her quilt. She lifted me out of bed and began stumbling along the long narrow corridor, past the kitchen and the bathroom and out of the apartment towards the stairwell. She hugged me tighter as we hurried down the two flights of stairs, past the big front door and on down towards the basement. Half awake now, I clung to her. I was afraid she would drop me on the hard floor. She had never run down the stone steps before. Hadn’t she always told me never to run down the stairs?

  You must always walk carefully, Renata, and hold the banister rail.

  She had told me this over and over again even though the rail was well above my head and walking downstairs, holding on, was most uncomfortable. But tonight was different.

  In the distance I could hear the sound of thunder – big, loud crashes raging around us. It must be a bad storm, I thought, if we had to leave our home in the middle of the night and shelter in that dark, smelly basement. When we reached the cellar beneath our apartment block, our neighbours were already huddled together, wrapped in blankets, talking in low voices. Through the half-light I could see Babcia, my grandmother, amongst the ghostly faces but I couldn’t find my father.

  ‘Where’s Tatuś?’ I asked.

  ‘Darling, he’s somewhere in Europe still, with the Polish Army,’ Mamusia said, sighing deeply.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Because there’s a war on. As I told you before.’

  I clutched Rabbit tightly inside my quilted cocoon.

  She placed me gently on the ground and stood up, turning her attention to our neighbours’ urgent whispers. No one had explained to me what war was. I pulled her quilt closer around me, tucking it back under my feet where its folds were letting in the cold autumnal air. I buried my face in its softness and surrounded myself with the recognisable smell of my mother. In the flicker of candlelight Mamusia’s quilt came alive. The familiar peacocks, embroidered with the multicoloured threads that I liked to pull when Mamusia wasn’t looking, spread out like huge, colourful fans in hundreds of blues; their emerald-green eyes had all turned and were watching me.

  It reminded me of the story of the giant with a hundred eyes who guarded the gates of a mysterious place called the Underworld. People went there when they died – or had it been the giant who guarded a cow that belonged to a goddess and she had put each of his hundred eyes on the tail of her favourite bird, the peacock? I yawned. I couldn’t remember – I would have to ask Mamusia to tell me the story again. I wanted to hear all her wonderful stories again. The ones she told whilst getting ready to go out when I would sit at the foot of her bed on her dark blue velvet chaise longue, watching her.

  Renata and her Mamusia, Tosia, before the outbreak of the Second World War

  ‘Do I look nice?’ she always asked me.

  I would look at her smiling lips, her big brown eyes surrounded by a mass of shiny dark hair.

  ‘Oh, yes. You look beautiful,’ I’d answer every time, as she finished putting on her make-up and straightening her hair, because she was. Mamusia was the most beautiful mother in the whole wide world.

  In the flickering candlelight I felt myself being hushed back to sleep by the murmuring voices. I didn’t resist because the peacocks were watching the darkness, protecting me from the crashes of thunder that raged outside.

  When I awoke the next morning, I was back in my own little bed that stood in the corner of the living room. I looked round, trying to work out whether the events of last night were real or just a dream. The heavy table and matching chairs with their lion-paw feet were still standing in the middle of the room. The large sideboard crowded with silver ornaments still leaned against the wall. Across the room, the blue-and-white stove stood with its head touching the ceiling. I loved that stove with its heat and shiny tiles; some had little pictures on them of the countryside, others had flowers. I remembered how much I’d wanted to touch the people with their funny pointed hats and strange clumsy shoes that Mamusia called clogs. I loved sitting near the stove with Mamusia while she told me stories and we ate bowls of wild strawberries and sour cream. Then came the moment when finally Babcia and Mamusia were out of the room at the same time and I ran over to touch those magical scenes. But the stove was hot and burned my fingers. I stuck my finger in my mouth to stop myself from crying. I never touched the stove again but I never stopped looking at the pictures.

  The smell of Babcia’s cooking drifted through from the kitchen. It made me feel hungry so I called out to my grandmother. But it Mamusia who appeared in her bedroom doorway, the one between my bed and the stove. She smiled at me.

  ‘My little darling is awake,’ she said, lifting me out of bed, hugging me tight and planting a kiss on the top of my head. ‘It’s time for breakfast, sweetheart.’

  She didn’t say anything about last night. The storm had passed and everything was just the same as before. It must just have been a bad dream.

  But things weren’t the same as before. Mamusia and Babcia were the same, our house and the things we did every day remained the same. Mamusia still went out most days to her work. I would be left at home with Babcia and Marynia, my nanny. Marynia still took me out for my afternoon walk, even though my cousin Zazula didn’t accompany us any more. Yet something had changed. I didn’t know what.

  At first it was little things, Mamusia and Babcia no longer laughed quite as much. They would often go quiet when I walked into the room and then start whispering when I left. Mamusia wrote a letter to my father every day. To begin with he used to write back, and Mamusia would lift me up and together we would sit at her writing desk. She would open the thin grubby envelopes and read aloud Tatuś’s news, repeating his words once, twice, even three times. Then she would take her own thick cream paper from a small drawer in the front of the desk, pick up her black pen and write a reply. I would watch as her fingers guided the ink across the page leaving its trail of black loops, dots and squiggles that I could not understand. But now she would leave me playing with my toys and sit alone at her desk with a big frown on her face. She wrote letter after letter.

  In the beginning I wanted to help. I would leave my toys and go to her at her desk.

  ‘Are you writing to Tatuś?’ I would ask and try to climb on to her lap.

  ‘Yes. Now go and play with Rabbit,’ she would say, stroking my hair and then gently pushing me away. ‘I need to concentrate and get this letter in the post.’

  After trying to climb up on to her lap a few times I gave up. It was always better not to disturb my mother when she was concentrating. Yet although she wrote lots and lots of letters on her lovely cream paper, she hardly ever received one of Tatuś�
��s grey, grubby ones in reply. More often than not, her cream envelopes were returned unopened.

  Great-aunt Zuzia, Babcia’s sister, didn’t change. She still came to visit. I always knew when she was on her way to see us because I could hear the clickety-clack of her shoes with the long, thin heels in the street below. I would stand on tiptoe on the balcony outside my parents’ bedroom and peer over the railings in between the hundreds of pots brimming with flowers. I couldn’t wait for Aunt Zuzia to come. I’d watch her walking along the pavement until she was swallowed by the door of our apartment block. Then I would run to our front door and sit on the top stone step and wait for her. I could hear her as she climbed the stairs, clickety-clack, to our apartment. I loved the visits from Aunt Zuzia.

  The identity card belonging to Renata’s father, Dr Erwin Falik, when he joined the Polish army as a physician

  Aunt Zuzia was always happy and laughing, smothering me with kisses and presents. She brought me pretty things like the special grown-up outfits I loved best. She and her husband, Great-uncle Julek, didn’t have any daughters, only two sons, my cousins Fredzio and Jerzyk. They were much older than me. Aunt Zuzia always wore the most beautiful clothes, bright colours – reds and blues, yellows and pinks. Her shoes were so elegant with their high heels, bows and buckles. Babcia used to sigh and say, ‘She’s as colourful as a butterfly.’ She did look like a butterfly and when I grew up, I wanted to look like my happy Aunt Zuzia.

  One day, while carrying me up the stairs to our apartment, whispering and giggling, she slipped and fell. One of the heels of her scarlet peep-toe sandals came off. We sat there on the stairs and stared at the broken shoe. We were stunned and dismayed. I thought she’d be so cross but when I caught her eye she burst out laughing. We laughed and laughed. Then Aunt Zuzia pulled herself up and tried to walk but she went loppity-lop on one side and kept falling over.

  I could not understand why life wasn’t normal any more. What had the storm done to our lives? I tried to talk to Mamusia but she didn’t understand.

  ‘What storm, darling?’ she said as if she didn’t even remember.

  Babcia just shook her head. ‘Run along now, there’s a good girl, and play with your toys.’

  And where was Tatuś? He had never been away this long before. Every day I wished he would come home because Mamusia now always looked sad and never had any time to play.

  Then came the week when Aunt Zuzia stopped visiting every day and, when she did come, she brought with her grumpy Great-uncle Julek instead of exciting presents.

  ‘Why is Uncle Julek always so miserable?’ I asked Babcia.

  ‘There is a war on,’ Babcia explained. ‘Your uncle has a lot of sick people to look after. He has to work long hours in the hospital and not in his own clinic any more. The hospital stays open all day and night. That’s why he’s so tired.’

  This war was beginning to get on my nerves. I asked Mamusia again and again what it was. She always said that it was when men were fighting each other but whenever I peeped out of the window I never saw any men fighting. She never said why the war had made my father disappear or my beautiful happy Aunt Zuzia almost as grumpy as Uncle Julek. She was always crying now and talking about Cousin Jerzyk as if he was dead and as for Uncle Julek, well, he never smiled and became grumpier with every visit.

  Other relatives, those who had often come to our house too, stopped visiting altogether; Cousin Fredzio and his beautiful wife Frederika from Lwów, Aunt Adela, the wife of Mamusia’s brother Uncle Cesio, and their daughter, my cousin Zazula. Tatuś’s parents from the country never visited and I soon forgot what they looked like. The grown-ups now spent their time talking in low, serious voices about boring things I still did not understand like war and Germans, whoever they might be.

  Then one day even Aunt Zuzia and Uncle Julek stopped coming and the apartment seemed very empty. I felt lonely and sad. Even my nanny, Marynia, no longer came to pick me up and take me for our daily walks in the park. I missed the laughter, the love, feeling safe. I could not understand what had happened but I knew that the nice things had gone and they weren’t coming back and no one would tell me why.

  Renata on the balcony of Jagiellońska Street, 1938

  ‘Wake up, Renata! Wake up!’

  I woke up without protest, listening for the thunder. I grabbed Rabbit and followed Mamusia along the hallway. She didn’t say anything. Babcia came out of her bedroom next to mine and the three of us made our way down the steps to the basement, together with everyone else in the apartment block. Another storm was raging outside and I was tired. I just wanted to go back to sleep. But I knew that I mustn’t argue and must do as I was told. Mamusia had that look on her face – she was concentrating. A little while later, wrapped in her blue peacock quilt, I fell asleep on the cold, hard cellar floor.

  This time when I woke up we were still in the basement. The thunder hadn’t stopped.

  ‘Why are we still here?’ I asked Mamusia. I was scared, I didn’t know what was going on.

  ‘Oh, my darling, I didn’t realise that you were awake.’ Mamusia pulled me towards her. ‘The Germans are bombing the city.’ Mamusia groped for my hand in the darkness and held it tight. We huddled closer together in that cold, dank basement for what seemed like forever. Then at last the thunder stopped and, one by one, everyone left the basement and went back upstairs.

  Our apartment was filled with smoke. It smelt horrid and made me choke. I rushed down the hallway, through the living room, past my bed and on into Mamusia’s room to look out of the window.

  ‘Mamusia!’ I cried. ‘The balcony is broken and Babcia’s flowers are all over the street. There is a bed down there too. What’s happened? Where is everyone? The street is empty!’

  The balcony was hanging off the wall and I didn’t dare go out. The railing had broken and now Babcia’s pots full of beautiful flowers that had filled the balcony had gone. I looked out onto the street. I didn’t recognise the view. The tall stone houses were dirty and their balconies had collapsed. Their flowers and flowerpots sat on the pavement with mounds of earth, tables and chairs. The street below, which was usually full of people, was empty. The smell of burning was worse than inside.

  Mamusia didn’t answer my questions. Instead she picked me up and held me close. I could feel her tears wet on my cheeks. Then after a while, she said, ‘Don’t worry, darling, at least we are safe.’

  ‘Safe from what?’ I stared at her. ‘The thunder?’

  ‘Safe from the bombs and the soldiers fighting. That’s why we had to go into the basement so that we wouldn’t get hurt. It doesn’t matter about our things, as long as you and me and Babcia are safe. It’s all over for now.’

  At last I was beginning to understand what was happening – there was no thunder, just the bombs that the men were using to fight each other. But these fights were worse than those I had with Cousin Zazula, these man-fights meant breaking things that weren’t theirs and hurting people they didn’t know. Suddenly I realised that maybe Cousin Jerzyk really was dead after all. I looked over Mamusia’s head and saw plumes of smoke blotting out the summer sun and the view of the River San and the mountains beyond.

  Babcia was wandering through the rooms of the apartment, as if she were walking and sleeping at the same time, leaving a trail of footprints in the dust that also filled the air and was now settling on the stove, the furniture, on the Persian rugs that covered the wooden floors, the silver on the sideboard, the writing paper on Mamusia’s little desk. Even the pictures that now hung crookedly on the walls.

  We both just stood and stared.

  Then suddenly Mamusia looked at me and said brightly, ‘Don’t worry, it is nothing that a little bit of cleaning can’t put to rights.’ She patted her skirts and turned towards the broom cupboard and began to make a start.

  A few days later, Mamusia came back from a visit to town looking worried and carrying something in her hand. Babcia met her at the door and took her into the kitchen. Usually I
wasn’t allowed in the kitchen in case I hurt myself – my grandmother was the boss of that room and she was the cook. But that afternoon I followed and sat with them at the small table.

  ‘Uncle Julek has told me that we mustn’t go out of our front door without wearing one of these,’ Mamusia said.

  She opened up her hand and showed us three yellow six-pointed stars. Looking at them in the dim light of the kitchen, I thought they looked quite pretty, just like stars fallen from heaven on a clear night, except that the colour was not quite right and the points were too short. I wouldn’t mind having to wear one of those.

  ‘Why? Why us?’ said Babcia.

  ‘All of us,’ Mamusia replied, ‘all of us . . . Jews. Julek says we have no choice. Gestapo orders.’

  ‘What does it mean?’ Babcia asked. ‘Why only us?’

  I felt glad that I wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand.

  ‘We have to wear it,’ Mamusia said quietly. ‘Julek was insistent and he should know now that he is on the committee that liaises with the Gestapo. It’ll only be for a while, until the war is over.’

  War.

  There was that word again. So war meant more than soldiers fighting and breaking things that weren’t theirs, it also meant soldiers killing each other and we, who didn’t want to fight, having to wear pretty little stars so that they wouldn’t hurt us by mistake. Pretty stars to keep us safe. I liked that idea. I felt very grown-up now that I knew what Mamusia and Babcia were talking about.

  But then Babcia spoilt it by saying, ‘I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all.’

  The next day Mamusia went off to work as usual. She made sure that the yellow star wouldn’t fall off the arm of her coat before opening the apartment door. I went back to playing with my toys. In the living room I had lots of toys, soft toys of every description, spinning tops and of course dolls – all in pretty dresses. My special doll was Baby Doll dressed in a long white nightdress with lace around the neck and sleeves. She lay in her very own pram.