فصل 95

emilia

The tiny baby nuzzled against me. The knight said she was part of Mother, part of Father, part of me. If she was part of us, I wanted her to know our city of Lw?w. She should know Poland. Looking at the child, I suddenly became hungry for my country, for its fat bees carrying nectar from apple flowers and for the birds singing in clusters of hazel.

How would she know the truths from the untruths? Would she believe that Poles, Jews, Ukrainians, Armenians, and Hungarians had all coexisted peacefully in Lw?w before the war? That I often made tea and doughnuts with Rachel and Helen in our kitchen?

Food. I wanted her to know our food. How my hands missed the feel of dough dusted with flour. My ears missed the snap of apple pancakes in the pan and my eyes missed the rainbow of fruits and vegetables sealed in jars on the shelves. War had bled color from everything, leaving nothing but a storm of gray.

I wanted her to know not only Poland, but my Poland.

I pulled her close and whispered in Polish: “There were no ghettos, no armbands. I often fell asleep to a breeze floating through my open window. It’s true. It was like that once.”