Dobryd by Ann Charney

Author:Ann Charney
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504009782
Publisher: The Permanent Press

PART FOUR

I

A short time after my mother began working for the Russians as a translator, she received a bonus for her work which made her the envy of our neighbours. The night she brought it home—a small piece of paper with her photograph attached, permitting her to travel anywhere in Poland—she, Yuri and my aunt talked of nothing else. It was hard for me to share their excitement. All I understood from their conversation was that my mother could now travel as often as she liked and that she would have to be very careful.

Why should she want to leave Dobryd, I wondered. The prospect of my mother’s travels did not please me at all. I dreaded being separated from her for any length of time. Fear entered my heart. What if something terrible happened to her on one of her journeys and she never returned?

Later that night, when my mother came into my room, my anxiety spilled over. She smiled and reassured me. She promised she would never be gone very long, not more than a day or so. There was no danger at all. At the end of her trips there would always be a gift for me.

I trusted her and my fears retreated.

She soon began going regularly to Lwow, the old university town some ninety kilometres west of Dobryd. At the end of the war it had quickly re-established its claim to being the most important city in the region. The university had been reduced to ruins, but its marketplace, the criterion of civilization in those days, was already renowned. Sitting in my aunt’s booth, I had often heard travellers extol its merits. These descriptions roused my curiosity and reconciled me to my mother’s departures.

In our family, the trips became the highlight of the week. The rest of the time we either helped my mother prepare for one, or we listened to her tell us what she had seen and heard during her absence. The nights when she was to return from Lwow I insisted on waiting up for her no matter how late it was, and my aunt, for once, thought of something other than my well-being. Together we would wait, for the moment contemporaries, since in contrast to my mother, we were both helpless, weak children.

I didn’t know why my mother went to Lwow every week, nor how she managed to bring back the things she did. She returned flushed, tired, but always triumphant, her arms full of packages—surprises for me and my aunt. When she talked of her trips I understood only bits and pieces of what she said, yet I loved to listen to her and watch her face as she recreated her day for us.

What enchanted me most about those trips, more than the things she brought back for me, was the effect the trips had on her and consequently on us. My mother was then in her early thirties. The war had marked her, as it had everyone else. She had lost her husband, parents, a brother, sisters, most of her friends.

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