Nila

(1) NILA

You are sitting on the veranda of your summer house.
Summer. Warm. No desire to do anything. No rush.
The delightful life of a pensioner? Or just maybe boredom?

You read for the second time the last edition of REUNION68.
What connects you with these people? Only the origin?
Due to your age, you are not too much on the roll with them, but anyway...
Most of them have not experienced an adult life in Poland.
For them, Poland means summer camps, school friends, and their first youthful experiences.
The Lost Paradise?

Maybe you are just exaggerating this.
They also got to know the taste of bitterness, even not to the same extent.
Leaving Poland and germinating in a new ground was their reality and base.
For you, it is like repetition of the journey from the Soviet Union to Poland, only 30 years later. The difference is that this time, not your parents, but you yourself had to make all the decisions.
This is one more difference between you and them.
You cannot blame the others for your mistakes.
Unless you want to ride the horse of anti-Semitism.
Or maybe they have done you a favor?
Maybe you needed that kick to stop pretending that everything was fine?
Admit that if it weren't for your children, you would never decide to go.
As usual, you had more luck than sense because Denmark had not yet dealt with the Palestinians.

What does it look like from the perspective of all these years?
For you, that's 38 years. For Nila, it's probably 45.
But the story begins much earlier.
Do you remember those times? The beginning of the sixties.
Nila's parents' apartment in Pogodno quarter.
Their plot and lots of fruit trees.
Do you have any photos from the beach in Międzyzdroje?
Summer, sun, beach, Baltic Sea, and Nila's father.
Remember how he looked at you teenagers running carelessly into the water?
He told you that he turned 50 that day.
He still felt young but was already an old fellow to you.
You always liked him, and for any reason, you felt sorry for him.

Remember the masquerade ball at school?
Mrs. Ala conjured up a fantastic outfit for Nila, which was supposed to represent Queen Elizabeth II. You were supposed to be a pageboy, but Mrs. Ala overdid it with a costume made of black lining, which, together with a sword she found at the last minute and painted mustaches, presented you at the ball as Henry VIII.
This was enough for third place in the best self-made prom costume competition.
Nila's outfit was considered to be a costume borrowed from the theater.

You liked arguing with Nila because she was eloquent and endearingly idealistic.
Do you remember how angry she was when you called the Warsaw Uprising a sheep rush?
You were a bit impressed by her poetic inspiration, although you never showed it.
You always treated her as a good friend. Or maybe you weren't awake yet?

Do you remember their apartment in Warsaw?
Nila went to study Polish Literature, and Mrs. Ala did everything to be close to her daughter.
Mrs. Ala's brother got a contract abroad, and his available apartment was a fantastic opportunity to move to Warsaw.
Getting registered in Warsaw and an apartment there would be almost a miracle.
But Mrs. Ala arranged it. It was she who found her husband a job in the Jewish cooperative.
He couldn't adapt to the rather specific conditions in this place.
It seemed that he couldn't really get used to life in Warsaw.

Do you remember their visits in Szczecin?
He was reliving and remembering his work in a motorbike factory in Szczecin.
She couldn't understand him.
"I tell him: You have a job, we have an apartment, Nila is with us. Enjoy it! But he is not happy!"
You laughed about it at the time.

Then it became a little less funny.
Mrs. Ala's brother returned home after finishing his contract, which no one in their right mind expected. Least of all Mrs. Ala.
And they started living in rented rooms.
Finally, they got their own apartment.
Do you remember Witek Jelen (Deer), Nila's husband, from this period?
Maybe because of his surname and the phone pranks he talked about?
"Is that a Deer?"
"Yes, listening?"
"Piff! Poof!"
Some were more advanced and informed about the end of the protective period for deer.

The last time you visited them was on your way back from your trip to Yugoslavia.
The mood was funerary because they were leaving Poland and emptying their apartment.
All this after years of effort to finally get it.
Only to find out that Poland is no longer a place for them.
Do you remember those human hyenas that roamed the apartment to get the goods in it for almost nothing?
Your hand balled into a fist, but you didn't say or do anything. What could you do anyway?

You looked at Nila's parents.
These people started their lives in pre-war Poland.
Then escaped and spent years of war in Soyuz.
Long and difficult beginnings after returning back to Poland.
And at the time when everything started to look rosy, the fate struck them again.
You looked at Nila's mother. What was she going through?
Is this how she imagined the new, socialist Poland, for which she spent years in prison before the war?

You don't really know how they did after that.
Has the reality in the new country, which does not resemble socialism at all, cured Mrs. Ala completely of her youthful idealism?
Has she finally stopped considering Poland as her homeland?
Was the Polish language still closer to her heart than Yiddish?

You always felt that fate has not been too kind to you.
But what about generation of your parents?
Have you ever heard them actually complain about their fate?
So why are you complaining so much?
I tell you, "Enjoy."
But you're not happy...

August 2014.