Memoirs of Warsaw: Childhood and School Years
Part I: The Apartment on Sapieżyńska Street
I shall begin with the very first address I remember perfectly: 7 Sapieżyńska Street, Apartment 30, on the fourth floor. Our family consisted of four people: my Mother (Helena), my Father (Gabriel), my older sister Sabina (later Wójcikiewicz), and myself (Lunia). I remember our "apartment" on Sapieżyńska vividly: entering from the stairwell, the door was on the right. Inside, there was a hallway, a kitchen, a toilet, and a spacious room with an alcove leading off the main living area—our "salon." In the alcove stood my parents' two beds, flanked by nightstands; nothing else could fit. High up on the opposite wall was a small window. In the hallway, beneath the coat rack, stood a wicker basket for dirty laundry. The kitchen had a wooden plank floor, and I loved the smell of it when it was scrubbed. In the main room, the floor was carefully polished with red wax and buffed until it shone. There stood a large, three-door wardrobe with a grand mirror. The first section served as a linen chest. My Mother kept the linen there in extraordinary order, beautifully arranged and tied with canvas ribbons she had embroidered herself in beige and pink with labels like tablecloths, sheets, pillowcases, and the like. I did not inherit her passion for neatness, though I always found both her order and aesthetics deeply impressive. At the center of the room stood a table with six beautiful chairs. The window overlooked a deep, rectangular courtyard.
We were strictly forbidden from playing with the children in the courtyard. We never protested against this rule; I suppose we were considered somewhat "better" than the courtyard children. Sabina, however, being naturally sociable, found a way around the situation. She would call out of the window, "Children, children!" and throw down some of our worn-out toys, which sparked wild enthusiasm among the whole little crowd.
On the right wall hung a brown pendulum clock with Roman numerals. My Father attempted to teach Sabina the art of telling time. With his cherry-wood cane topped with a silver handle, he would point to the various numbers. It was not easy for either of them, and my Father would become deeply frustrated.
Part II: Of Stepmothers and Magic Chemistry
Most of our time was spent with Mother. I used to draw passionately, utilizing not only Bristol board but any piece of paper I could find. Once, I even drew my little stick figures on some of my Father's important documents, making sure that each hand had exactly five fingers. I was read many fairy tales, mostly by the Brothers Grimm, about wicked stepmothers wishing to kill their stepdaughters. One particular story stuck firmly in my mind: the wicked stepmother poured poison into a mug of milk. Just as the little girl was about to reach for the mug, a little cat jumped onto the table and knocked it to the floor with its tail. This left a permanent green stain on the floor planks. Whenever my own Mother grew angry with me for something, I convinced myself that she couldn't be my real mother—she had to be a stepmother. Clearly, I already possessed an inquisitive mind. At the next opportunity, when a cup of grain coffee with milk was placed before me, I carefully poured a little bit onto the kitchen floor with a spoon. No green stain appeared. Assured that she was indeed my real mother, I stopped looking at her with suspicion. What a relief!
Sabina was soon sent to school—a preparatory class at the Goldman-Landauowa Gymnasium. Her teacher was Miss Bala, who even visited us at home. Later, she attended the Strauch-Szlezingerowa Gymnasium. No ordinary public school would do; my parents clearly had high ambitions and loftier aspirations. Perhaps this was the influence of Aunt Łonia, my Mother's older sister and the mother of our cousin, "Gruba Irka) "fat Irka". They lived in a beautiful apartment at 30 Elektoralna Street. Aunt Łonia set the social tone, and my Mother always valued her opinion immensely. Perhaps these were also the unfulfilled dreams of our Father, Gabriel.
Despite our apartment being small, we always employed a maid—a girl from the countryside, for whom a folding cot was set up in the kitchen. One of them came from a village along the Bug River and was of German descent; her name was Marta Milke. I do not know why I have remembered her name for so many years.
Part III: The Magic of Interwar Warsaw
In the winter, the maids always wore checkered shawls to protect themselves from the cold, while ladies were strictly required to wear hats [INDEX]. I suspect it was for the sake of these country girls that we celebrated Christmas and set up a Christmas tree, fragrant with pine and resin. Preparations began several weeks in advance. Together, we made colorful chains from glossy paper and various ornaments. A warm, pleasant atmosphere filled the house; for a brief time, we were not just next to each other, but truly together. Cutouts of angels or Saint Nicholas heads formed our primary material. We would glue the angel heads onto cardboard and use white thread to hang them on the tree. I remember much giggling when we cut out Saint Nicholas, especially the gap between the upper part of his legs. This piqued my curiosity, and I believe it was exactly then that I realized there was a difference between girls and boys. Soon after, Aunt Lodzia—my Mother's younger sister—visited us with her sons, Nitek (Nikodem) and Zdzisio. At an opportune moment, I asked Nitek to show me what he had in his trousers. Despite the boy's resistance, I finally managed to persuade him and satisfy my curiosity. Fortunately, he never told anyone, and the whole matter passed without an echo.
In our dining room, a large chandelier hung over the table, illuminated by a gas mantle. There was no electric lighting or lightbulbs yet. Gas lamps lit the streets, and they were lit by men holding a long pole with a small flame at the end. I emphasize this phenomenon specifically so that you do not think the world always looked the way you found it. At Aunt Łonia’s on Elektoralna Street, they had a refrigerator. Blocks of ice were bought and placed inside, and later, a small tap would drain the water from the melted ice. I watched this with fascination and perhaps a bit of envy. My Father's two sisters, Aunt Irena (Renia) and Aunt Nina Forbert, lived in grand apartments at 26 Polna Street. That building had an elevator. It filled us with awe and wonder. Whenever we visited Polna Street, we would ride the elevator up and down repeatedly, utterly blissful. Alongside my Forbert cousins, Fredek and Irka, we were often joined by the sons of the building administrator, Mr. Zwayer.
Aunt Renia's apartment was not just large; it was beautifully furnished. A long hallway led to four rooms on the left and two others. In the salon stood a magnificent sideboard and a display cabinet filled with lovely crystal glasses and coffee cups. But my greatest awe was reserved for what we called the "bathing room"—the word bathroom was not yet in common use. A real bathtub, a shower—what wonders! In Aunt's bedroom stood a piano. My Father would sit down and, even without sheet music, play beautiful, familiar, and unfamiliar melodies. For us, it held an incredible charm, connected in my mind with a palace, or even an enchanted world.
My Father was very athletic. From mid-May onward, he would go to the pool by the Vistula River to swim. On his head, he wore a straw hat, similar to the one I saw many years later worn by Maurice Chevalier. On other occasions, he wore a bowler hat. I never once saw my Father go out into the street without a head covering, or in just a colored shirt, let alone without a tie. He fastened his trousers with suspenders, which seemed to me the only normal way. He skated and danced beautifully on the ice; I saw this myself.
At home, we read a great deal, and my Father declaimed poetry beautifully. I still know a series of poems by heart from those "prehistoric" times. We played Ludo (Chińczyk), then a lottery game, and sometimes spun a top.
My Mother had long, dark-golden hair. When she combed it out, it formed a cloak that covered her almost to her feet. Our frequent guests were my grandparents. I loved my grandfather dearly, and he favored me. He often told me about his childhood and youth, and that is how I learned about old times and problems. Grandfather was a fantastically interesting man. He lived at 139 Marszałkowska Street, on the first floor, Apartment 16. I want to remind you of Julian Tuwim's poem and his words... "the gentleman from the first floor looks at the madman..." Living on the first or second floor carried a certain nobility.
I taught myself to read, mainly from street signs. One of the first words I mastered was Fryzjer (Hairdresser). I don't remember the sequence after that, but it went smoothly, and soon I was reading our books all by myself.
Part IV: The Great Battle for School
The time came, and Mother took me to the Plac Broni (Square of Weapons) to enroll me in school [INDEX]. Turning left from our building, Sapieżyńska Street continued, then turned right into Bonifraterska Street, leading to the school. It was a barracks that housed two schools, one of which was Public School No. 5. The queue in front of the office was immensely long. Please remember that this occurred during the period of universalizing education, and the demographic boom was unprecedentedly high. When we finally reached the office, we were informed that there were no places left, and furthermore, I had not yet reached the mandatory school age. My Mother, however, refused to accept defeat. She went around the back, through the courtyard, and managed to reach the headmistress herself. I was deeply upset by this turn of events, and clearly embarrassed by my mother's persistence. (In later years, whenever long lines formed at the cinema, I never tried to bypass the queue). "Mother," I said, "when they tell us again that there are no places, tell them it doesn't matter—I will gladly stand," I remember my feelings perfectly, but the whole story survived mainly because my Mother retold it not only to Father but to various aunts and to Grandfather as well.
Father often took us on walks to show us something interesting, or to the cinema. I mainly remember two cinemas: Urania on Krakowskie Przedmieście, and the Municipal Kinematograf on Hipoteczna Street, which also had an entrance from Długa Street. How these events and even the topography suddenly came alive in my memory! I don't think I had thought about them in decades; they were hidden deep in my subconscious. Once, on Krakowskie Przedmieście, we stopped before a monument. I read the inscription independently: "To Adam Mickiewicz, His Compatriots." I already knew who this man was and was familiar with some of his works, like The Father's Return. However, I did not understand the word compatriots (rodacy). Father tried to explain it to me in a clever way, but I still couldn't grasp it. Confused, I asked (and please remember this was just a few years after the First World War): "Are the Russians also... Compatriots? And the Germans?" Decades later, I would stand face-to-face with a new world, and this question still haunts me.
"We shall not abandon the land of our lineage," goes the song, and my lineage stems from Poland. Yet, we were forced to leave this land, to abandon it. Or perhaps She, at least in our feeling, abandoned us? Rejected and cast us out.
To return to the thread: the girls who worked for us often took me to church, especially for the Easter blessing of eggs, which had been boiled with onion skins so they looked festive, taking on a bronze-gold color. We usually went before Christmas to see the Nativity scene. The atmosphere inside the church made a powerful impression on me. I told my parents everything; none of this happened in secret, but with their full permission. Father liked the Christmas pageants too.
I never knew my grandparents on my Mother's side. Her mother died when my Mother was only sixteen. She told us several times how she ran with her hair flying to fetch a doctor—there were no telephones yet, of course. My Mother's father died before I was born, though he lived to see my older sister. He owned fish ponds in a place called Sierpc, near the town of Lipno. We naturally called my grandfather's second wife "grandmother," but I did not like her. I don't remember exactly where I learned that she had been a wicked stepmother to our Father. Grandfather himself probably told the story humorously: when grandmother packed their school lunches, carefully wrapped, Grandfather would swap the packages with a quick movement, knowing that the one intended for his son Gabriel contained twice as much meat or cheese. Father himself told us that when he had to do his homework, grandmother made him pull out a drawer and do his assignments on the bottom of the drawer, because a beautiful tablecloth lay on the table. How could I like such a grandmother? I noted with satisfaction that she had a wart on her nose and that the skin on her upper arms was not firm, but like thick sour cream.
My grandparents had a spacious apartment at 139 Marszałkowska Street, Apartment 16, near the Saxon Garden (Ogród Saski). Living with them at the time were Uncle Piotrek, a violinist by profession and a former Legionnaire, and his two sisters, Zosia and Lola—the children from my grandfather's second marriage. The eldest, Aunt Nina Forbert, lived on Polna Street. It was said that her son, Fredek, would get onto the tram and tell the conductor, "Please take me to my grandmother on Marszałkowska Street," because he was a "well-brought-up" child [INDEX].
Let me also tell you how washing was done in our house. There was a tap and a sink in the kitchen. Mother, laughing, would say to me, "You've already washed your little hands and face, now we shall wash my little girl together." A large basin was placed on a stool, and the true washing began—which I detested. Once, while I held my hands in the basin, Mother remarked: "Yesterday at the market, I bought horseradish just like your hands." I kept that in my memory as something highly unpleasant. I was probably emaciated after an illness. For more than six months, I suffered through a dreadful bout of whooping cough, which was compounded by pneumonia. I vomited relentlessly. Returning to the washing: after the upper part came the lower, and only then the feet. The routine was fixed from above and, on Sapieżyńska Street, unchangeable.
I don't remember what I fell ill with next, but in any case, the doctor prescribed some repulsive medicine. In those days, medicines were compounded in the pharmacy. They were poured into dark little bottles; at the top sat something like a little cap, and inside was the prescription for use, held around the neck by a narrow rubber band. Ready-made medicines were a rarity. I refused to drink the disgusting stuff that Father brought from the pharmacy. He explained to me gently that if I drank it all, I would be completely healthy. I don't recall the exact circumstances, but because I had absolute trust in my Father's words, I swallowed the entire contents of the bottle in one gulp. Afterward, I suffered severe vomiting again. Not the first, nor the last misunderstanding in my autobiography. And not the first expression of goodwill that ended with an undesirable result.
Childhood infectious diseases, like scarlet fever and measles, did not spare our home. Mother once hit upon the idea of sending her healthy little girl to Polna Street, to my Father's sister, to protect her from inevitable infection. Once, it lasted longer than usual. Initially, I treated it as a pleasant adventure, but later, I became terribly homesick. Telephone calls were only a poor substitute for real contact. My aunt was truly very good to me; she took me for walks through the unfamiliar neighborhood near the Warsaw Polytechnic and brought me along to the market. She bought things she knew I liked, including a red celluloid fish for my bath. Her husband, Uncle Henryk, joked with me and told funny stories. I also remember that he would fall asleep with a cigarette in his mouth, which made his wife very angry.
Twice, I grew deeply upset with her. Once, during a phone call with one of my parents, she said it was better not to bring me to the phone, because the child gets too upset afterward. I harbored a deep resentment for this, having overheard the conversation by accident. The second time, I felt deceived. My aunt said we would have my favorite dish for dinner—cholent. Instead, it was beef rissoles with potatoes, smothered in a thick brown mushroom sauce. When my Father finally came to visit after several weeks and asked me in detail how I was faring on Polna Street, I answered truthfully that, actually, I was "VERY WELL." But then, in a hushed whisper, I breathed into his ear: "I would rather be at home, sitting in the hallway on the laundry basket, than here in Aunt's bathing room."
Part V: The Angel on the Podium
Mother triumphed! I was accepted. Fifty-four girls were crammed into the classroom, and a single teacher had to manage this large flock. Her name was Rebeka. She seemed to me the most beautiful woman in the world. Almost a saint. I was seated in the fourth row because I was tall. I was convinced that I had been placed in the fourth grade by mistake, and I would count on my fingers how old I would be when I finally finished school. (With mathematics, I was always at odds, and remain so to this day).
Since I truly knew how to read and write, after a few weeks I was transferred to the second grade, which was slightly less crowded than the first. Of course, a different teacher worked there—a bit older. She had a daughter my age and a son, and lived on Miodowa Street. The spell of that first teacher, Rebeka, shattered completely the day I noticed her entering the toilet. Just like everyone else. She was a human being, not an angel.
I had considerable trouble with going to the bathroom. In those days, we wore truly white undergarments, in keeping with the etymology of the word. A white bodice, to which underpants were fastened with thread buttons. I simply could not manage fastening the back button. One day, I dared to ask a classmate for help. Her name was Sabcia Zysk, and she lived on Muranowska Street. From that little button, our friendship began, strengthened by our shared secrets. Both of our mothers would take us to the nearby Traugutt Park. That garden had been created recently; there were no tall, shade-casting trees there yet, like those in the Krasinski Garden. We would receive treats from our mothers...
