A Delayed Life Read online

  Gerta’s father was Jewish, but her mother was not. At the time it was of no consequence, but later, when the Germans persecuted Jews, Gerta was spared because children of mixed marriages who were not registered as Jews were not deported. Her father, however, died in the Small Fortress of Terezín.

  I wanted to be like Gerta in many respects. Not only did she learn figure skating; she also learned English with a lady who took her for walks in the park—Letná, of course—and talked to her only in English. When we met she wouldn’t stop but walked on, conversing with her teacher.

  Gerta and I decided to look like sisters. Her mother suggested to mine that her seamstress make identical dresses for us girls. I felt that my mother was not enthusiastic—perhaps she didn’t share Mrs. Altschul’s taste—but she agreed. We each got two dresses, one of which I especially loved. It was made of soft fire-engine red wool fabric, with a tight bodice, a wide skirt, and a white lace collar. What my mother couldn’t understand was why such a warm dress had short sleeves: for summer too warm; for winter impractical. We also went together to the Bata shoe shop, where we got the same shoes, two pairs of them. Two pairs of shoes at once! I was so impressed by the unheard of extravagance that I never forgot it. But it didn’t happen again; my sensible mother was unwilling to discard two pairs of shoes at once, which of course I had outgrown in less than a year.

  We girls wanted our parents to become as good of friends as we were. The Altschuls were more than ready and invited my parents to celebrate Sylvester Eve at their home. Gerta and I prepared the entertainment. We were about eight years old. We rehearsed a ballet, and after the festive meal that Gerta’s mother prepared, we performed it, clad in Gerta’s skating dresses, accompanied by our own singing. The parents sat around the table and clapped, we bowed low and threw kisses like real ballerinas. Afterward, Mr. Altschul, who was a traveling salesman, told a few jokes, one of which was disgusting. It had to do with a man who slept in a strange house and didn’t find the toilet, etc. The mothers were conversing together, but my father sat woodenly, and I sensed his uneasiness in this incompatible company. Midnight came at last, we cheered the New Year, and then we went home to my parents’ relief. But I knew that the party had not been a success.

  * * *

  Every year on Saint Matthias’s Day, there is a fair in Prague, called Matějská Pouť. It used to be held on a huge circular plot in Dejvice, one of the suburbs of the city. Maria and I went there by streetcar, and even from afar, we could hear the loud music. There were carousels with white horses standing on their hind legs, swings with boat-shaped cradles in which one could sit, but the more courageous youngsters stood and made the boat swing sky high, so that their bodies became horizontal. There were shooting booths, where one could win a stuffed animal or a plaster figure of Amor with red lips and blue wings, pushcarts with pink sugar foam or tough and sticky Turkish delight. However, most interesting of all was the tall carousel, with the seats hanging on chains.

  The first round started slowly, the chairs swinging gently to and fro, but with each revolution the speed increased, and we were pushed outward by the centrifugal force and I felt my stomach heave. My fear turned to constricting terror and then to a state of abandonment. When we came to a halt, I slid from the metal seat on wobbling legs and tried to overcome my nausea. But I must have been so pale that Maria comforted me by saying, “This carousel is not as pleasant as I thought; we won’t ride it again.” I protested, because somehow I had enjoyed the scare; it had given me a sensual feeling in my underbelly.

  * * *

  My father’s name was Hans—in Czech, Hanuš or Jan. He was well-proportioned, medium height, with straight shoulders and a lean body. He had short, wavy dark hair, a Jewish nose, and gray-green eyes, the same as mine, which Mother used to call “Daddy’s eyes.” He was always carefully dressed, his fingernails perfectly clean, and when he took off his clothes at bedtime, he folded everything neatly on a chair. He removed the keys, pocket comb, and wallet and placed them on the table. In the wardrobe there were the starched detachable collars, arranged in the same order as the stack of ironed shirts. The collar was changed daily, and the shirt every second day. I see my father standing in front of the mirror, deciding which tie would match the color of the shirt and putting a clean handkerchief in his breast pocket. The bed is still unmade, because only after breakfast would Maria enter the bedroom and air the quilts and pillows in the open window. When I returned from kindergarten, and later from school, the bed would be smooth and tidy, covered with the beige bedspread, and the bedroom would smell cool and fresh.

  One day Mother and I went to see where Father was working. We took the tram to the outskirts of the city. There, on the slope over the Vltava, stood the impressive Social Security Institute, a huge building with a large cupola in the middle. Inside the grand entrance hall were two marvelous elevators without doors, moving slowly, one upward and the other down, without stopping. Mother said they were called Paternoster (the first word of the Catholic prayer), because people were afraid to ride in them and prayed to God for safety. I was scared, too, and asked her anxiously what would happen if we didn’t get off on the top floor; would the lift turn over and go downward headfirst?

  I was immensely impressed with Father’s office and proud that he was such an important man. He was Dr. Hans Polach, a doctor of law. At the Social Security Institute, he defended the workers’ interests, a task which was in keeping with his political views. He had done training at the law office of Dr. Ludwig Czech, who later became minister of welfare in the Czechoslovak government. Father had already decided then not to go into private practice, because it might have obligated him to defend criminals, knowing they were guilty, something his conscience couldn’t bear. And so he chose to become a salaried state employee and never grew wealthy, like many other Jewish lawyers.

  Not far from Father’s office, on the banks of the Vltava, was a bathing area, where we often went swimming in summer. Mother and I arrived by tram, and Father would join us in the afternoon after work. There were lawns and changing cabins and wooden jetties from which the swimmers could jump into the river. For children and nonswimmers there were floating enclosures, with boardwalks and railings around. The lifeguard was also the swimming teacher. He held a long pole with a rope over the railing, and the learner was hooked to it with a canvas belt around his middle. The guard chanted, “And one and two, and one and two,” while the spluttering victim tried to move his arms and legs in rhythm.

  When we had changed into our swimsuits—wool, of course, because synthetic fabrics were not yet available—Mother would rub our backs and shoulders with cocoa butter, the suntan lotion of those times. It looked like a big cube of brown soap and had a very distinctive smell, which I remember to this day. Mother and Father usually swam to the opposite bank and back again, while I played in the shallow pool.

  It was there where I—at the age of three or four—first became aware of my nakedness, like Adam and Eve after the Fall. Mother had taken off my clothes to put on my bathing suit, and suddenly I felt that my “popo” was exposed. Ashamed, I quickly sat down on the blanket and covered my crotch with my hands. I had made one of those inevitable transitions from innocence to knowledge. After that day, I did not let Mother undress me in public.

  * * *

  Father loved books. He read ancient Greek and Latin classics, German and French literature, but most of all he was fond of history and geography. He spent most of his free time reading, sitting on the green sofa under the reading lamp. There was a stillness about him, as if he were enclosed in a cocoon of tranquility. He moved silently and closed doors noiselessly; no click was heard when he put down the cup on the saucer. With the atlas of the world on his lap, he traveled with his finger over the continents.

  Mother once told me that when they were traveling on their honeymoon in a train across Switzerland and Italy, Father pointed out every mountain they passed, noted its name and height, and knew the name and lengths of
each river and the number of inhabitants of the cities where they stopped, until she became embarrassed in front of the other passengers, who must have thought him a show-off and a bore.

  Father wanted to introduce me to good literature, and when I was about ten years old he decided I could read Ibsen’s Peer Gynt. Of course it was far above my head and didn’t interest me at all. After that, I avoided any book that my father recommended, believing they must all be boring. Thus I owned Selma Lagerlöf’s The Wonderful Adventures of Nils for several years without reading it, because Father said it was a nice story. When I finally opened it one day, having run out of anything to read, I was so captivated that I didn’t put it down until I finished and then immediately started again from the beginning.

  My parents loved music and often went to the opera and to concerts. They both played the piano well enough, and sometimes they played four-handed, which I enjoyed. The pieces I liked best I marked in block letters in the little green music notebook, with lots of spelling mistakes in my preschool handwriting. My favorites were Schubert’s “Serenade” and a song about a rose that a naughty boy wanted to pick, but the rose revenged herself and pricked his finger with her thorn.

  My father had been a soldier in World War I. He was drafted toward the end of the war, just after his matriculation examinations when he was eighteen. He was wounded on the Italian front. I remember the four depressions, one on each side of his thighs. A single bullet had penetrated both legs, fortunately the first in front of the bone and the second behind the bone. I always begged Father to tell me again how he was rescued.

  He was shot just as his unit was retreating and was left behind, lying on the ground bleeding, perhaps mistaken for dead. He must have been unconscious for a long time. When he opened his eyes, he saw two Italian soldiers standing above him. When they noticed that he was alive, they made to shoot him. At that moment he remembered his Latin from school and begged, “Aqua, aqua.” The two soldiers took pity on him and gave him water from their canteens.

  For many weeks and months, his parents had no news about him. He had been taken prisoner of war, lying in a military hospital in Napoli, where he could see Mount Vesuvius from a window. His parents were notified that Hans was missing, but only much later did they get a postcard from him.

  I don’t have that particular postcard, but I possess a number of other postcards that my father wrote from the front to his Uncle Adolf, who was also in the army. They are faded and written in pencil and bear the stamp FELDPOST, with the Kaiser’s portrait. Only years later, when I was a mother myself, could I imagine the terrible anxiety my grandmother and grandfather must have endured when they did not know if their eldest son was alive or dead.

  * * *

  What a good-looking couple were my parents! A photo of Father in swimming trunks shows his well-proportioned body. Mother was not beautiful, but she had delicate skin, good proportions, and shapely legs. Her hair was light brown, and she wore it rolled up on her nape, as was the fashion of the time. Her eyes were light blue, her nose perhaps a bit too long. She was painfully aware of her protruding two front teeth, therefore she never smiled in photographs, except for one, when the photographer snapped her unawares.

  Father and Mother were good at other sports besides swimming. They went ice skating with me at the Letná, where in winter the tennis courts were turned into ice rinks. Father wore his green knickerbockers, which ended with a buckle under the knee, as well as his Windjacke (windbreaker) and wool gloves. He skated slowly and regularly, with his hands behind his back, around and around the rink. Mother’s ears were covered with a knitted headband. It was more fun when she came along; Father was always too serious and didactic.

  Both were also good skiers, but what they especially loved was mountain climbing. In the storeroom in our apartment were shelves with the hobnailed boots, short pickaxes, and ropes they used on their climbing expeditions in the Alps or the Dolomites. They did quite strenuous trails with mountain guides. I have some photos showing them suntanned, sitting on a snowy peak in Switzerland, which I found out later was the Matterhorn.

  Hans and Liesl Polach (right) on the Matterhorn, 1933 or 1934

  That storeroom, called Kammer, had another purpose. When I misbehaved (to this day I cannot believe I did; in my memory, I am an obedient little child…) they locked me up, until I repented and promised to be a good girl. In the dark I would find a hobnailed boot by touch. The inside of the door became pockmarked from the nails up to the height I could reach, as I banged on the door, screaming and howling.

  What my wrongdoing was that necessitated such punishment, I don’t recall. Once, perhaps, it was when I wet the floor. I had seen boys peeing standing up, and I also wanted to accomplish this feat. Time and again, I tried to stand with my legs apart over the toilet, but I was too short, and although I pushed my belly as far forward as I could, it still went all on the floor.

  I have another recollection concerning the toilet. I was maybe three and a half years old, just graduated from the potty to the adult seat, when one evening I slipped into the bowl and jackknifed, and with my head touching my knees, I could not free myself. My mother was in the living room, entertaining some friends; I could hear their conversation. I called and called as loudly as I could.

  “Mama,” I begged as she lifted me out, “don’t tell the guests that I fell into the toilet.” She washed, dried, and carried me back to bed.

  With bated breath I listened to the sounds from the living room. There was silence for a moment and then a loud burst of laughter. I knew she’d told them. Embarrassed, I cried myself to sleep.

  * * *

  The flat in the Electric House in Prague-Holešovice was our home from 1932 until the Germans evicted us at the beginning of the war in 1939. It was a new building with unheard-of innovations that were the talk of the town. I remember the flat exactly. In the entrance hall there were several doors: the glass door to the living room and plain ones to the bathroom and the utility balcony, which we called “gonk.” We also had a refrigerator, which came with the flat. Refrigerators were still very rare; kitchens had pantries to store food in. And of course one door belonged to the notorious storeroom. From the hall, a small corridor led to the kitchen, my nursery, and the toilet. My parents’ bedroom could be reached either through the bathroom or the living room. The rooms had large double-pane windows with pull-down black blinds called Rollo. The floors were wooden parquet, except for the kitchen, which had a reddish stone floor.

  On one wall of the entrance hall there was a closet for coats and hats. On the upper shelves, Mother stored all our woolens in summer—pullovers, shawls, and mittens—each wrapped separately in newspaper with a few grains of naphthalene against moths. I was very excited when they were taken out and aired at the beginning of winter, because I had forgotten them from the previous year and welcomed each cap and sweater like a long-lost friend.

  Dita Polach with her parents, 1932

  It was the same joy that I felt when I was allowed to wear knee socks on the first warm day in spring. In winter I had worn long, thick stockings like all the other children, along with my warm navy-blue coat and ankle-high boots, and I was elated at the lightness of my bare knees and the ease of movement in my thin shoes.

  Oh, for the years of childhood, when there is no awareness of the passing of time, when a day has no end and a summer seems to last forever. What joy to get a new pair of sandals, because the old ones have grown too small. Suddenly my flower-patterned, light dresses appeared in my wardrobe, together with one or two new ones. Mother used to make them herself, often assisted by my grandmother. Then my nursery would be turned into a sewing room, and for the next few days, the two women produced not only dresses for me but also aprons, pajamas, and skirts. Mother cut the fabric from paper patterns, and Grandmother stitched the pieces together by hand. I had to stand on a chair, and their four hands would pull here, put a pin there, and make me lift my arms. They stepped back and told me to turn left and
then right, and at last pulled the dress slowly over my head, taking care the pins wouldn’t scratch me. The sewing machine stood near the window, and Mother sewed on it, moving the pedal with her feet; there was no motor.

  Once I asked her to make me a tennis dress with a short skirt like those the young ladies who played tennis on the courts of Letná Park wore.

  Mother bought the material, but it was not completely white; it had colored stripes, and I was disappointed. “This isn’t a real tennis dress,” I complained. But when it was finished, I liked it notwithstanding.

  One did not buy readymade coats and suits in those years. They were considered to be of low quality and shoddy craftsmanship. One went to a tailor to have the garment made to measure. In our family we had a different procedure.

  First a letter was sent to Brno to my uncle Hans Bass, who had a textile shop and would, of course, give us a discount. A few days later, a parcel would arrive with samples of the best-quality fabrics. Mother, Grandmother, and Father (Grandfather would never deign to deal with such mundane matters) sat around the dining room table, rubbing the brown, gray, and black samples between their fingers, deciding which was suitable for a new winter coat for Grandfather, a suit for Father, or a skirt and jacket for Mother.

  When the heavy parcel with the material arrived from Brno, our tailor was summoned. He lived in Pilsen and came by train, bringing a stack of fashion journals. He took the measurements, made notes, sketched the models, and went back to Pilsen. He came a second time for the first fitting, full of smiles and politeness, carrying a suitcase. I loved to watch how he drew lines with white chalk directly onto the cloth. Sometimes a second fitting was necessary. And then at last the garments arrived, new and beautiful, meant to last if not a lifetime, at least for many, many seasons.