The Return

S. Nadja Zajdman

Renata leaned her head back to have it washed. It was the first time she’d been to a hairdresser in thirty-one years. The water drenched her hair, and soothing hands massaged her scalp. As she succumbed to the sensation, she remembered…Her brother had bleached her hair and pushed her into the sewer with one commandment: ‘LIVE.”…Renata marvelled at the gall of the fifteen-year-old she had been.

“Dye it,” she ordered the Polish beautician as she handed her the tint. Nothing exposed one as a Jew more quickly than a blond head with dark roots…Renata had returned to Warsaw after having fled to the Russian sector a year-and-a-half before. The only district now permitted her, was the Ghetto…She had stayed on in Bialystok after her mother’s death. She had refused to return with her brother. “I’m afraid of the Germans,” she told him. Her adult brother enrolled her in a Russian boarding school before going back to Warsaw alone. There she met Irena, a pretty Polish teenager two years older than she. Motherless, her father a prisoner-of-war, Irena had befriended and protected the homeless Jewish girl. Serene as Renata was high-strung, Irena guarded Renata’s allowance and portioned out their rationed food. While their classmates returned to their families during holidays, the two girls walked through the woods and roamed the halls of the deserted building together, sharing secrets, and telling each other of their families, which they had lost. In eighteen months they had learnt so much about each other that one could take on the other’s identity, which Renata would come to do.

It was Irena’s calm which would eventually kill her. At dawn on a morning in late June, Renia was blasted awake by frighteningly familiar sounds. “It’s the Germans!” She leapt into Irena’s bed.

“Don’t be silly, Renia. They’re far away.”

“No, they’re not. They’re coming, they’re coming closer! Please Irka, let’s get into the cellar. Let’s go down there, please.”

“Oh stop it; it’s just a loud storm.”

“Well if you won’t, I will!” Renata ran into the hallway. The staccato of Messerschmitts was unmistakable, now. It was too late to return and save Irka…The wailing of her classmates nearly drowned out the guns. The sky rained bullets as the Messerschmitts and Stukas mowed them down. A brunette with pigtails dropped backwards beside her. What, one moment, had been the freckled redhead who was tops in maths, was, the next, a severed head…Renata glanced behind her. The school was on fire.

The water stopped, and a towel was wrapped around her head. “Prosze. Pani. Come with me.”

Irena would be forty-nine, had she lived, but it was Renata who had to go on living with the memory of Irena, and all the others she had had to leave behind…After the blaze of Bialystok, Renata had nowhere to go but back to Warsaw and the Ghetto, which would confine her until the day her brother pushed her into the sewer. Surfacing on the Aryan side, Renata made her way to a safehouse. She did not know, and would not know until years later that her brother was a member of the Polish Underground, and her arrival at the safehouse was expected. A few weeks later, dark roots began poking through the peroxide her brother had applied, and she brazened her way into a beauty salon. Had it become necessary, she would have presented the forged papers with which she had been supplied, upon which her new identity was stamped: IRENA KRYSTYNA PODBIELSKA…

‘Would you like your hair cut?”

“No, just set, please.”

“You have lovely hair, Pani. You are not from here, I think.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Your hair is too healthy, and your clothes are too well made.”

“I was born here.”

“Really? Here? Right here in Warsaw?”

“Yes.”

“How long have you been away?”

“I left in 1943.”

“That long? And your hair is still not grey? Or perhaps you dye it.”

“No, this is my natural colour.”

“Amazing. Such a lovely chestnut. Here a woman your age would’ve gone grey years ago…Where do you live now?”

“I live in Canada.”

“Oh! How fortunate! Is it really as wonderful as they say? How do you find our country after such a long time away?”

“Sad. I find it depressing.”

“Yes, it must seem so to you, coming from such an enchanted place. For us, the war will never be over. After the Germans, came the Russians. Their tanks may be gone, but their oppression remains. Still, Hitler did us one favour; he rid us of the dregs and the Jews…Prosze Pani! Keep still! I will ruin your hair if you jerk about in such a way!”

Renata stepped out into the autumn drizzle and draped a scarf over her freshly-done hair. She set out on foot for the address she had been given. She loathed calling a cab — one look at the coat she’d bought in London and the meter would become conveniently broken, while the fare would magically rise. The bombed city had been reconstructed according to its pre-war design, and Renata did not need a map to find where she was going. As she passed the food lines and fatigued faces and the closed shops which had run out of wares, she wondered why she had agreed to come back to this place. Like other survivors, she had vowed never to return to the land that had caused her so much humiliation, and pain. As a refugee in a new land, she had forged another identity. The lawyer’s daughter from Warsaw had swept floors and cleaned toilets in offices and manufacturing firms. Singled out by her employers as too bright to be wasted, they had brought her into their inner sanctums, and had her trained in commerce. She married another refugee, and together, they built their own business. She had inspired and worked beside an often frightened husband, refusing to allow him to give in to despair. They had had children, born in freedom; a family to replace the families each had lost. And now, as an established importer, she had been sought out by the Polish Trade Commission to help revive the economy of an almost bankrupt nation. To her astonishment, she had accepted…“Dolarki! Dolarki! Change money, Mrs! Please!”

“Get away. I will not change money. You know it isn’t legal. Leave me alone!” The sleazy figures slinked back into the shadows. Renata had chosen to conduct personal business in the homes of the people she was seeing, rather than invite them to her hotel. On the night of her arrival, she discovered that her room was bugged.

Renata’s pace quickened. She reached the address she’d been seeking, and entered the arched doorway. She had come bringing dollars for the sister of her husband’s friend. “Pani Mann! I’ve been expecting you. Prosze bardzo. Please, do come in!”

Renata stooped to enter the basement apartment. There was a beat-up sofa in the main room, two wooden chairs, and a frayed area rug. Through a partition, Renata could see a pot simmering on a gas stove. The wallpaper was peeling, and the air was heavy with the must of years.

“Prosze Pani. I have soup for you.” Basia Czerska beckoned her guest to the kitchen table. She ladled out cabbage soup flecked with meat. Renata realized the hours of waiting invested in attaining those specks of meat. She sipped the liquid and left the food, knowing it could still be put to use.

Renata pulled out the money and photographs she had brought from Basia’s brother. Basia devoured the images, pushing aside her bowl of soup. Basia Czerska was a middle-aged divorcee who lived in this hole of an apartment, alone. She had left her husband years before. Alcoholism was a national disease, and Basia’s husband had been afflicted. Men used vodka to solve unsolvable problems, and the demons it invoked masked despair. Drinking had also induced her husband’s anti-Semitic streak, another illness plaguing the Poles. Marriage to a Jewess created a combustible situation, and Basia had bailed out. Intermarriage was one of the few reasons there were still any Jews left in Poland, but in a country with a heritage of hate, love between Gentile and Jew was doomed.

“Tell me Pani. What is your first name?”

“My name is Renata.”

“Really? It’s beautiful. But how does a woman born in Poland come to have such a name?”

“My father studied in Switzerland. He brought the name back with him.”

“Such a lovely, musical name. You know, I have a friend whose daughter’s name is Renata.” And Basia went on to tell her guest all about this marvellous friend. Then she made a slip of the tongue which could bring one to believe in God, if anything could. She referred to this friend by her maiden name. “…and then Irena Podbielska said to me—“

“What? WHAT?! You’re lying! I am Irena Podbielska! My name is Irena Krystyna Podbielska, I was born in Lomza, and my father is a prisoner of the Germans. Who dares call herself by my name?! This other girl is an impostor, whoever she is! I am Irena Podbielska! I am not a Jew!”

“Pani Mann!”

“Ja jestem Irena Podbielska! I am Irena Podbielska! I am not a Jew! I am not a Jew!”

“Renata!” Basia smacked Renata out of her hallucination. “Pani Mann! Please! What is wrong? What have I done?” Renata told her; “My friend Irena had a father with the border patrol who was taken prisoner-of-war. Her mother died when she was six. She had two stepmothers…The first one died, and the second was deported to Siberia in 1940. She had two step-sisters. The younger one was deported with her mother, and the other lived in Lomza with their grandparents.”

“It sounds very much like Irka.”

“But it’s not possible! I saw the school go up in flames!”

“Neither Stefan nor Irka ever told me such a story.”

“Stefan?”

“Her husband.”

“Her husband?” What is her name now?”

“Weinfeld.”

“But that’s a Jewish name.”

“Yes. She married a Jew. She has a son named Roman, a daughter named Renata, and she’s married to a Jew.” The women shuddered. “Well, there’s only one way to find out. I don’t have a phone, but the Weinfelds do. When Stefan retired from the army he turned to writing. His works of science-fiction have become prominent--they’re required reading in the high schools…They aren’t managing too badly. They’re one of the few who have a phone…Chodz Pani Renata, we call from the post office. We can still get there before it closes. Chodz Pani Renata. Come.”

Basia led her guest through the darkening streets. What if it isn’t her? Worse, what if it is, and she doesn’t remember me? It’s been thirty-three years since the morning we lost each other, and we’d been together only eighteen months. Why should she remember me? It was another life.

Basia dialled and spoke with a man on the other end. Then a woman’s voice came on the line. “Hello Irena. Here is Basia. I have a visitor from Canada who says she has news of a friend of yours.”

“Of mine? But I don’t know anyone in Canada.”

“I think you should speak to her…”Prosze Pani, take the phone. Don’t be afraid. Take it. Please.”

“Hello. Pani Weinfeld?”

“Yes.” Oh help. How does one do this? “Pani Weinfeld, were you born in Lomza?”

“Yes, I was.”

“Was your mother’s name Helena, and your father’s name Czeslaw?”

“Yes! Yes! But I don’t know anyone in Canada!”

“Pani Weinfeld. Do you—would you—would you happen to remember a Jewish girl from Warsaw?”

“Why of course. Renia Skotnicka. She was my friend. She died.”

“Irka.” Renia slumped against the wall. “Irka, it’s me.”

A scream pierced the receiver. Then there was silence.

“What’s this? Who are you? What have you done to my wife?!”

“Pan Weinfeld? I’m sorry. Is she alright?”

“Is she alright? Is she alright?! She’s just fainted! Is she alright…Irka! Irka!” There was a muffled commotion, and then, “Alright, she’s coming to. But who are you? And what did you say to my wife?!”

“I’m sorry. I know it was a shock. It was a shock for me too. I knew Irena during the war. We were roommates in a boarding-school.”

“Renata? Are you Renata Skotnicka?”

“Yes.”

“But that’s impossible. You’re not suppose to be alive. You were killed in 1941. The Germans shot you all!”

“Not all. Three of us survived.”

“Oh god. My god.” Stefan Weinfeld, the Polish-Jewish science-fiction writer, started to cry. Basia intervened. “Stefan, I’m sending her over in a taxi. Now you’re expecting a guest, so pull yourself together!” Basia sniffled. “Come. I will call a taxi.”

Basia waited with Renata until the taxi arrived. She gave the driver the address and added, “This lady is a V.I.P. from Canada, so if you flick off your meter I’ll report you to the militia!” The taxi sped away. It deposited Renata at her destination, where a woman flanked by two men was standing on the sidewalk, waiting for her. She paid the driver and tried to tip him. “No Pani, no! No want dolarki. No want trouble!”

Renata stepped out of the taxi, and it took off. She turned to the people beaming at her. A middle-aged man with a beaked nose, a receding chin, and glasses; a pale young man with red hair and his mother’s high forehead — between them stood Irena. She had grown stout, and dowdy. Her twinkling brown eyes were hidden behind glasses, and her wispy ash blond hair had turned to grey.

“I wouldn’t recognize you, Irka.”

“I wouldn’t recognize you either.” They brought Renata to their apartment, where another Renata had just arrived. She was sixteen, a senior in high school. She looked like her brother; the same porcelain pallor, the fine red hair, and their mother’s high forehead. She was a dreamy girl, sensitive and shy. She had often wondered about the lost Renata, and marvelled that she was now meeting her.

Solemnly, the family gathered around their guest. “What happened to you, Irka? How did you survive?”

“It wasn’t our school they set fire to--it was the building next door. I ran back to my home, to my grandparents and my sister. A few weeks later I met some of our friends who thought they’d seen you, but weren’t sure. I’d heard everyone was killed, and even if one or two managed to escape, I was sure it couldn’t be you. You were so helpless; you seemed the least likely to survive.”

“What happened to your father?”

“He was shot in the prisoner-of-war camp trying to escape. I found out through the Red Cross.”

“And your step-mother?”

“She survived. So did my sister. The younger one died of cancer after the war…Once, I made a trip across the country and passed through Sochaczew. I remembered you telling me it was your father’s home, and that you’d spent your summers there. I couldn’t help it, I cried.”

“I was deported in 1943. I came back here in ’45 to look for my brother. I found him, and together we looked for you. There was no trace, so I put in a request to the Red Cross. They couldn’t find you either. You see, I wanted to thank you.” Renata gazed at the family of eyes wondering at her. “I survived in a labour camp as a deported Pole. My brother had the papers forged. I thought you were dead, so I took your identity.” It was too much. Irena broke down. The men sat helpless. Renata wrapped her arms around her mother, and held her…The two women talked far into the night. As the sun rose Renata turned to Renata, “Tell me about yourself. What is it you would like to do?”

“I’m not sure. I thought of being a journalist, but in this country one cannot tell the truth. Perhaps I can be an architect. I should like to build something.”

“I’m going back to Canada tomorrow, but I don’t ant to lose any of you. One day you must come to visit me, and my husband and my children, each and every one of you. In the meantime, I would like you to let me send something. What is there that I can get for you?”

“Well, I know Roman would like a pair of jeans, and Daddy would like books that he can’t get here, thought I don’t know if that would get you into trouble.”

“But what about you? Isn’t there anything I can get for you?”

“Well, if it wouldn’t be asking too much…could I have a Burt Bacharach record?”

Renia smiled. “I think that can be arranged…Irka.” The women faced each other, drained. “Let me send you something. What is it I can get for you?”

“Well,” Irka sadly fondled her prematurely grey head. “Do you remember the colour my hair used to be? It wasn’t that long ago. If I could have something from Canada, I think I should like…” she gulped, then pressed on. “If I could have anything, really anything, that I wanted, then I would like to have—a bottle of peroxide.”

Renata didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. “Irka! They don’t make peroxide anymore!”

“They don’t?”

“No! They don’t!”

Irka’s face fell. “Products have improved, Irena. I’ll send you something better!” Stefan called a taxi. Renata stepped out into full sunshine. Autumn was shouting a last hurrah. The air was vibrant, and the leaves were as red as the children’s hair.

“Pani Renata! Pani Renata! I just thought of something!”

“What is it, Renata?”

“If I write a letter to your daughter, will she answer?”

“I’m sure she will. My daughter enjoys writing letters. She enjoys receiving them even more. But what makes you want to write to my daughter?”

“Well, if I did, I would have a pen-pal in Canada, which would be something very special--even more special than a Burt Bacharach record. And if we wrote to each other then we’d be sort of…friends, you know, like you and my mother.”

Renata embraced Irena’s daughter. “Good-bye, Renata.”

The taxi came. Renata got in, and turned to catch a last glimpse of the receding figures waving good-bye.