Join us on May 14 at 12:30 p.m. ET on Zoom for Paper Brigade Presents: A Cel­e­bra­tion of the Short Sto­ry with Basia Wino­grad, Barak Kas­sar, and Josh Rolnick!

Cur­tains ironed, lace doilies bleached and starched, fresh flow­ers arranged in vas­es. An entire after­noon devot­ed to the rugs, which Mama dragged down four flights of stairs and beat with a feroc­i­ty that made the lit­tle girls col­lect­ing stones in the court­yard cow­er in awe. And here we final­ly were, the night before Aunt Estera’s arrival. For the first time in fam­i­ly his­to­ry, sup­per did not appear on the table. Tata and my broth­ers dis­ap­peared into their bed­rooms, embar­rassed some­how by Mama’s rapid­ly inten­si­fy­ing indus­tri­ous­ness, her insis­tence on reach­ing so deeply into cor­ners of cup­boards that hadn’t been touched in years.

I stood in the door­way between the salon and foy­er, the left­over pick­le soup and day-old blintzes I’d scav­enged from the fridge cur­dling in my bel­ly, and observed Mama comb­ing the tas­sels of a Per­sian rug. ​“Guess I’m going to sleep hun­gry, then,” I sulked. 

“Maks, wait,” Mama called as I shuf­fled past her. She motioned to a pho­to­graph she had placed on top of the cre­den­za. ​“Have a look, tell me what you think.” 

It took a few moments to make sense of the blur­ry black-and-white shapes arranged in the pewter frame. Even­tu­al­ly I rec­og­nized my Aunt Estera hold­ing me, an infant at the time, propped on her lap. My head, already cov­ered in pale curls, was wedged in the crook of her elbow. My head, already cov­ered in pale curls, was wedged in the crook of her elbow. Zbig­gy, a tod­dler, stood at atten­tion on one side of her, and Tomasz, four or five, stood on her oth­er side, glar­ing at the cam­era. My old­er broth­ers’ stern brows and nar­row faces were minia­ture repli­cas of Aunt’s.

“You sure you want to show­case this? We look mis­er­able.” Mama picked up the pho­to and wiped it of imag­i­nary dust. She stud­ied the image up close, then from far­ther away, and final­ly placed it back down on the cre­den­za, angling it toward the door­way. ​“It’s the only decent one of her I could find.”

I wait­ed a moment longer to see if she’d offer me any­thing. A fried egg or even just a glass of warmed milk. A kind word? I cra­dled my cramp­ing mid­sec­tion. ​“My stom­ach hurts, by the way.” 

“My good­ness, and here I thought you were mere­ly hungry.”

__________

I crawled into bed won­der­ing about the woman who had inspired such a fren­zy of house­keep­ing in my moth­er. What, real­ly, did I know about my aunt, Estera Haas­man Bul­let­ti? That she lived in a fairy-tale land known as Milano … That we had her to thank for the design­er blue jeans my broth­ers and I flaunt­ed on the streets of War­saw, while scratchy Sovi­et imi­ta­tions bunched at with Tata still res­olute­ly refus­ing to join the Party. 

My innards gur­gling, I got up to go to the bath­room. In the hall­way, I dis­cov­ered Mama kneel­ing in front of the open clos­et; she was tuck­ing the paint­ing of the Black Madon­na of Częs­to­chowa that nor­mal­ly hung on the wall across from my broth­ers’ bed­room behind the coats. I’d nev­er liked the paint­ing, the way the macabre Madon­na gazed down on me, eter­nal­ly dis­ap­point­ed, every time I passed her on my way to the bath­room. But Mama and Tata were proud of it; they nev­er tired of telling us that it was one of very few Pol­ish antiques the Ger­mans hadn’t pil­fered dur­ing the war.

“What are you doing with her?” I asked. 

Mama glanced guilti­ly up at me. ​“Just for while Aunt Estera is here. She won’t let me hear the end of it if there’s an icon on her dar­ling brother’s wall.” 

“What’s she got against an icon?” 

“Your aunt is con­vinced I’m secret­ly God-fear­ing and try­ing to turn your father Catholic.” 

Back in my room, I picked up the paper­back Aunt had sent me in her last pack­age. Tata had request­ed Eng­lish-lan­guage books for the three of us, as they were impos­si­ble to find in War­saw. The Amer­i­can sto­ry col­lec­tion Estera chose for me fea­tured a cast of young men who behaved in a man­ner so direct­ly in con­flict with their best inter­ests that I thought I had to be mis­un­der­stand­ing the Eng­lish. The char­ac­ters all made much ado about being Jew­ish but the exact nature of this Jew­ish­ness was blur­ry. They didn’t pray, or go to syn­a­gogue, or do any of the oth­er things I asso­ci­at­ed with Jews … though admit­ted­ly I was far from an expert on the mat­ter of what Jews actu­al­ly did. These con­flict­ed Amer­i­cans drove around vis­it­ing anx­ious rel­a­tives who fed them a mys­ti­fy­ing array of exot­ic foods — chopped liv­er, corned beef, bagels, mat­zoh balls, jel­lo — and pep­pered their speech with Pol­ish words. Page-long para­graphs were devot­ed to sex­u­al fan­tasies. I kept wait­ing for some moral to con­clude the tales, for pun­ish­ment to be met­ed out to these flawed fel­lows. Why had Aunt sent me such a book?

__________

When Aunt Estera breezed into our apart­ment the fol­low­ing morn­ing in her white mink coat and match­ing hat, the first thing she said was, ​“Well, Feliks, I see you haven’t yet done the world the favor of get­ting rid of this ghast­ly cab­i­net.” She tapped the gleam­ing sur­face of Mama’s favorite cre­den­za with the tip of a gloved finger. 

Tata backed into the apart­ment behind her, drag­ging her suit­cas­es. ​“What have you got in here?” he huffed, face pinched and pink. ​“Bricks?” 

“Cul­ture, Feliks. Cul­ture.” Aunt dropped her leather gloves on the cre­den­za. ​“You wouldn’t under­stand.” She stepped back to con­sid­er the birds and squir­rels etched into its teak doors. If she noticed the pho­to­graph, she said noth­ing of it. 

Mama had been wait­ing at the win­dow all morn­ing, and when she’d seen Tata’s Tra­bant pull up in front of the build­ing, she’d rushed to line up my broth­ers and me in the foy­er. Now she hov­ered behind us as we greet­ed our Aunt Estera, duti­ful­ly kiss­ing her cool pale cheeks, and ask­ing how her flight had been. 

Per­fect­ly fine, thank you very much, she assured us, and cut off the rest of the ques­tions Mama had script­ed by drop­ping her coat and hat into Tata’s arms and mak­ing her way, unin­vit­ed, into the salon. 

She wore a beige tweed suit, cut close­ly to her tense, mas­cu­line form, and smart, low-heeled suede shoes. Her short chest­nut hair, remark­ably vibrant, was brushed away from her fore­head. Her pale pink silk scarf — draped, not tied — lent her just a touch of fem­i­nin­i­ty. I had nev­er seen a woman like her, and was grate­ful, when she swept the apart­ment with her exact­ing gaze, that such a fuss had been made about tidy­ing up. 

She instruct­ed the three of us boys to sit down on the sofa across from her as she low­ered her­self into the Vic­to­ri­an chair at the far end of the cof­fee table. Tata dropped into a small­er chair next to his sis­ter, and Mama flit­ted between the kitchen and the salon, apol­o­giz­ing for the medi­oc­rity of her cheese­cake, tak­ing orders for tea and coffee. 

I lis­tened as Aunt and Tata exchanged news. Her Pol­ish had an entranc­ing Ital­ian lilt to it, and she used words I’d only ever read in books, dic­tion that had fall­en out of fash­ion in the two decades she’d been abroad. When Tata spoke too long or grew a bit pedan­tic, the tiny gray spheres of Aunt’s eyes brimmed with an impa­tience that I would, only years lat­er, rec­og­nize in oth­er women of uncom­mon intelligence. 

Mama placed a tray of cof­fee, served in small glass­es sit­ting in pewter hold­ers, on the cof­fee table. 

“It’s not your Ital­ian espres­so, I real­ize,” Tata said. 

“Don’t be sil­ly, I quite missed cof­fee in the Pol­ish style … that fine grit between my teeth.” Aunt pulled out a pack of cig­a­rettes from her small leather purse. 

Tata gri­maced. ​“Must you, though?” ​“Ah, Feliks, imag­ine, so many years and you’re still such a bore.” 

“But you just had one in the car, and you know — ” 

“Ester­ka,” Mama cut in in a tone I didn’t rec­og­nize, some­how both con­cil­ia­to­ry and cold. ​“Why don’t you tell us about your plans?” She had squeezed onto the couch between Zbig­gy and Tomasz and was pass­ing the glass­es of cof­fee around the table. ​“Feliks tells me you’ve got meet­ings set up with all the who’s who of Warsaw … ” 

“Yes, well, after over a decade away I’m bound to have what to do these months.” 

Mama glanced sharply across the cof­fee table at Tata. Three weeks, he’d told us. Weeks. ​“How won­der­ful,” Mama said. Her sog­gy cheese­cake squelched when she pressed her knife into it. ​“You were able to get all that time off work.” 

“I’m here on busi­ness, dar­ling,” Aunt cor­rect­ed Mama. ​“But don’t wor­ry. I’ll have plen­ty of time to spend here at home with you and my deli­cious boys.” She appraised the three of us care­ful­ly. ​“I’m pos­i­tive­ly livid that the world has so con­spired to keep us apart all these years. I’ve missed you terribly.” 

When no one said any­thing, I spoke up. ​“We’ve missed you, too, Aunt Estera.” 

This set off a wave of laugh­ter and spec­u­la­tion on whether I was even born the last time the con­sulate approved Aunt’s visa appli­ca­tion (indeed I was; please note the pho­to­graph on the cre­den­za), whether the year was 1949 or 1950, which of us three boys vom­it­ed in the car dur­ing the trip to the Lakes, etc., etc. ​“My we’re hand­some though, aren’t we?” Estera exclaimed when a date and sto­ry had been set­tled on. ​“I only won­der if they’re as clever as they are good-look­ing, hmm?” 

“Tomasz is a genius with cam­eras,” Mama said. ​“He’s inter­est­ed in the mechan­ics, how they work, actu­al­ly builds them from spare parts — ” 

“Inter­est­ed in any excuse to focus on pret­ty girls is more like it,” chuck­led Tata. 

Aunt shot her broth­er a with­er­ing look. ​“Your father has always been sim­ple-mind­ed, Tomasz. There are of course many things to point a cam­era at that are not sil­ly young women. And you’ll have plen­ty of time for romance even­tu­al­ly, so I trust you’ll be wise now and focus on your schooling.” 

I could feel Tomasz bris­tle next to me and won­dered how long it would be before he found an excuse to slink away. 

Aunt took a sip of her cof­fee and thought for a moment. ​“Look, Tomasz, I’ll be going to Łódź in a few days. You’ll come with me, I’ll make intro­duc­tions. Maybe we could even arrange for you to assist on a film set next sum­mer? The admis­sions com­mit­tee at the film school likes that kind of thing.” 

Tomasz glanced up in dis­be­lief from under his pouf of curly dark bangs. 

“Don’t over­promise, Estera.” 

She ignored Tata. ​“Would you like that?”

“Sure,” Tomasz said, his voice ren­dered unrec­og­niz­able by wonder. 

“Not ​‘sure.’ ​‘Yes, Aunt Estera.’ And straight­en up when you speak.” 

Tomasz straight­ened up. ​“Yes, Aunt Estera.” 

Zbig­gy and I hid our smirks with fork­fuls of mediocre cheese­cake. Aunt Estera turned next to Zbig­gy. ​“And you, my beau­ty? Still plant­i­ng orchids on the balcony?” 

“African lilies,” Zbig­gy told her. ​“I took them in for the win­ter. They’re in the win­dow of the big bed­room, where you’re sleeping.” 

“How love­ly.” Aunt reached across the table and caressed Zbiggy’s cheek. The motion sent an unfa­mil­iar shiv­er up my spine. ​“I do so love fresh flowers.” 

While Aunt and our par­ents mused on which rel­a­tive Zbig­gy had inher­it­ed his green thumb from, I tried to think of some­thing clever to say about the Amer­i­can stories.

But Aunt did not turn to me. Instead, she began speak­ing in tongues. Or at least in some lan­guage that I didn’t under­stand. The room plunged into an awk­ward silence. 

“Their Hebrew, Feliks?” 

Tata stared into his cof­fee cup. ​“Hmm?” 

“Our sons are being tutored in Eng­lish. Don’t pre­tend I haven’t told you.” 

“Ah yes, Eng­lish. Of course they must know Eng­lish, so prac­ti­cal a lan­guage. How­ev­er, I sent mon­ey for Hebrew lessons.” 

“Oy, Estera,” Tata sighed wearily. 

“We had a con­ver­sa­tion, Feliks … ” 

“I’m sure the boys can learn Hebrew if they decide to one day,” Mama inter­ject­ed in a strange, stran­gled tone. A bare­ly per­cep­ti­ble shud­der passed through Aunt. It was clear that she could not bear the thought that her sis­ter-in-law should have any say at all on the mat­ter of her nephews’ education. 

__________

In the days that fol­lowed, Zbig­gy and Tomasz accused me of trail­ing Aunt like a pup­py. They claimed I walked like her now, with my shoul­ders thrown back, which was not at all a Pol­ish way to walk. They claimed I’d added a jaun­ty Ital­ian lilt to my speech. This was an exag­ger­a­tion. I’ll admit, how­ev­er, that it was always me who brought her an ash­tray, or made her cof­fee, fil­tered through a hand­ker­chief to clear it of pesky grounds. Once she even asked me to rub her tem­ples when, on account of Pol­ish body odor, she devel­oped a headache.

I liked being around her. I liked her smell. It was gar­licky some­how, musky and expen­sive. I didn’t find her beau­ti­ful, exact­ly. At least not in my ado­les­cent under­stand­ing of the term. But dur­ing the time she spent with us, I’d repeat­ed­ly hear the word ​“hand­some” used to describe her appear­ance. Some­thing about our Aunt Estera made peo­ple straight­en their backs when she entered the room, check the edges of their lips for crumbs.

__________ 

Zbig­gy and Tomasz had moved into my bed­room so that Aunt could have her own room. For pri­va­cy, I often escaped to the small study off the back of my par­ents’ room. One after­noon, I was read­ing my book when Aunt and Tata came into the bed­room, dis­cussing the details of their busi­ness plan. Aunt had brought a roll of print­ed silk with her from Milano, and they intend­ed to cut it up for scarves. ​“To bright­en up this fash­ion waste­land,” as Aunt put it. 

As they argued over the length of the scarves and whom to trust to spread the word about them and how much to pay the seam­stress, I dozed off, my head rest­ing on my book. I woke some­time lat­er to Mama’s voice. ​“I picked up some love­ly trout at the mar­ket,” she said. ​“So … I’ll just go and start get­ting din­ner ready.” 

I rec­og­nized in the silence that fol­lowed that Mama was wait­ing for Estera to offer to help in the kitchen, the way every oth­er woman who had ever paid us a vis­it at home would have done. No such offer came, and moments lat­er, Mama’s foot­steps reced­ed back down the hallway. 

“It’s uncan­ny how much that woman reminds me of Lud­wiga. You remem­ber Lud­wiga, Feliks?” 

“How could I for­get Lud­wiga? Cook­ing and clean­ing, putting up with us ras­cals all those years?” 

“Lilka’s got those same haunch­es. They’re mag­nif­i­cent. A tru­ly equine qual­i­ty. And then there’s that pref­er­ence for flow­ered blouses.” 

“Not every­one can buy their wardrobe in Milano, Estera.” 

“She’s equal­ly use­less at cook­ing, unfor­tu­nate­ly.” My father chuck­led. The betray­er. ​“In any case, you should be kind to Lil­ka. She suf­fers from a bit of nervousness.”

I sat up, cold. It had nev­er occurred to me that my moth­er might have an emo­tion­al state of her own. 

“I do my best, you know I do. But I can’t pre­tend I’m not disappointed.” 

“Dis­ap­point­ed? What exact­ly are you saying?” 

“I’m say­ing, dear broth­er, that you’ve basi­cal­ly gone and mar­ried the maid.” 

I swore I felt the rever­ber­a­tions of her throaty smoker’s chuck­le in the wool rug below me. I jumped to my feet, ready to defend my mother’s hon­or. But my feet were clay. 

“Look, Feliks, you know I love Lil­ka. I just … wouldn’t have mar­ried her.” 

“And you didn’t mar­ry her. I mar­ried her.” 

“That you did, my broth­er. That you cer­tain­ly did.”

“Remind me of your husband’s name again?” 

Indig­na­tion replaced irony in Aunt’s voice. ​“Giampao­lo is a dif­fer­ent sto­ry and you know it. Giampaolo — ” 

“ — wasn’t a Pole,” Tata com­plet­ed her sen­tence for her, his voice weary. 

Lat­er, when I went down to the kitchen, my moth­er was peel­ing pota­toes, her calves thick below the hem of her skirt. I sat down in her favorite chair by the stove and pre­tend­ed to flip through the romance nov­el she kept on the windowsill. 

I not­ed the unruly blond curl, moist with sweat, that fell over her fore­head, the smear of flour on her cheek, how her heavy arm shud­dered with each stroke of the pota­to peeler.

__________

Word got out that Estera was back in War­saw, and invi­ta­tions flowed in. When she spoke on Ital­ian Com­mu­nism at the Con­tra­dic­tion Seeker’s Club, Zbig­gy accom­pa­nied her. When the Ital­ian con­sul invit­ed her to dine at the glass-walled inter­na­tion­al restau­rant on the top floor of Warsaw’s high­est build­ing, Tomasz went along. (“It wasn’t enough that the wait­ers put an Ital­ian flag on our table,” he com­plained when I asked how it had gone at the famed expat hang­out. ​“Aunt insist­ed our table get an Israeli one as well.”) 

Aunt promised to take me some­where, too, but said it had to be an event ​“appro­pri­ate to my age.” I was only a year younger than Zbiggy. 

While my broth­ers con­tin­ued to serve as Aunt’s ​“hand­some young suit­ors,” I stayed home, try­ing to make sense of the over­sexed Jews in her Amer­i­can stories.

“You’re not miss­ing any­thing, Goldilocks,” my broth­ers assured me, using Aunt’s annoy­ing nick­name for me. These were drea­ry affairs, they said, full of name-drop­ping bores falling all over each oth­er to wax poet­ic on the most obscure top­ics: Does The Baron in the Trees rep­re­sent Calvino’s defin­i­tive down­fall? Is hav­ing an ide­o­log­i­cal stance cen­tral to all great writ­ing? Will his­to­ry judge the social real­ist era of Pol­ish cin­e­ma more kind­ly than we do? Was Knife in the Water a fluke? And Jews: Aunt could not stop talk­ing about the Jews. It was incred­i­bly awk­ward for every­one involved. I ached for an invitation. 

__________

One Sat­ur­day morn­ing, a month into her stay with us, Aunt stepped out of her bed­room in slacks and a sweater, a checked scarf on her head. She took Mama’s large mush­room­ing bas­ket from the kitchen, and when she returned from the mar­ket she instruct­ed Tata to go down to the Kamin­skis for an extra table and a few more chairs. ​“Take a bath, Lilecz­ka,” she told Mama, chas­ing her out of the kitchen. ​“Put on your very best flow­ered blouse. We’re hav­ing guests for dinner.” 

Aunt’s soup course, ​“Car­rot Cucum­ber,” was iden­ti­cal to what Mama called ​“pick­le,” but Aunt sprin­kled the dill along the broad rim of the plates she bought for the occa­sion instead of dump­ing a pile into the mid­dle of a reg­u­lar bowl. She also made stuffed cab­bage, and served it with a sauce of wild mush­rooms cooked in red wine, but­ter, and some­thing she called ​“beef demi-glace.” The pota­toes, she explained, were whipped with but­ter and kefir. 

Nev­er had so many com­pli­ments to the chef flown around our din­ing room. 

The guest of hon­or that evening was an Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist, a stout man in his thir­ties whose large brown eyes filled with tears when he told Aunt how moved he was by the fla­vors of her cook­ing. He was born in Poland, he said, and the fla­vors took him straight back to his youth, before Hitler, the war, Majdanek … 

Aunt’s oth­er guests includ­ed Mar­i­an Kot, the Łódź-based book pub­lish­er; his wife, Jad­wiga, a poet; and their teenage daugh­ter, Julia. The con­ver­sa­tion over soup revolved around Stanisław Lem. Had that writer’s move to sci­ence fic­tion been a tragedy, or the great­est thing to have hap­pened to Pol­ish, nay, world, lit­er­a­ture? Soon the debate moved on to Isaac Bashe­vis Singer: did Poland have any claim on the writer? In the Unit­ed States, the Amer­i­can told us in his fun­ny Pol­ish, Singer was con­sid­ered mere­ly Jew­ish. This in turn spawned a long debate on whether too much was being made in our times of the nation­al iden­ti­ties of writ­ers: should a work of art be judged free from any con­sid­er­a­tions of who its cre­ator might be? 

Aunt was entire­ly in her ele­ment. Sit­ting in Tata’s usu­al spot at the head of the table, she super­vised her brother’s pour­ings of the Ital­ian wines the con­sul had giv­en her, and cor­rect­ed his pro­nun­ci­a­tion when he announced their names. 

When every­one was good and drunk, Aunt excused her­self and fetched a pile of books from her bed­room. She placed them on the table and spoke at length about each of their authors. It was a sac­ri­lege that these great thinkers had not yet been trans­lat­ed into Pol­ish. We were liv­ing in the lit­er­ary dark ages here behind the Iron Curtain … 

In response to the tired silence that met her rant, Aunt turned to the Kots girl, who sat between her moth­er and father, across from my broth­ers and me. ​“Julia, sweet­heart, we haven’t heard a word from you tonight. Tell us, how is school?” 

Julia, a shy, home­ly girl, spoke of her school with a breath­less rev­er­ence that had Tomasz groan­ing and elbow­ing me. She men­tioned a Hebrew teacher who wrote nov­els in his free time, and the Hanukkah pro­duc­tion her the­ater club put on.

“I had no idea Julia is at the Jew­ish school,” Tata said to Mar­i­an. ​“I don’t think I real­ized it was still functioning.”

“We moved her over a few years ago,” Julia’s moth­er explained as she came out of the kitchen car­ry­ing anoth­er bot­tle of wine. Jad­wiga wore her black hair in a bowl cut with a fringe that end­ed at her eye­brows. ​“After the unpleas­ant­ness start­ed in earnest.” 

“Ah,” Aunt said, know­ing­ly. ​“And how is the anti­semitism, darling?”

Julia pressed her thin lips togeth­er in a pained smile. When her words final­ly came, they poured out in a bare­ly com­pre­hen­si­ble rush. ​“My first year we had school on Sun­days, peo­ple would see us in the street with our school­bags and give us hell.” She stopped short and glanced around the table nervously. 

“Go on,” Aunt said. 

“Then the school switched the days, so we could go in on Sat­ur­days, like kids in oth­er schools. Things got eas­i­er after that.” 

“This,” the Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist said, slam­ming his palm against the table, ​“is pre­cise­ly the rid­dle my edi­tors demand I solve.” His Pol­ish, already severe­ly com­pro­mised after two decades in Amer­i­ca, was now also slurred on account of Aunt’s wine. ​“Amer­i­can read­ers are famil­iar with the num­bers. The prob­lems Jews had in Poland before 1939 — they make some sort of sense to us.” He traced a neat cir­cle in the air with his hands to com­mu­ni­cate how sen­si­ble pre­war anti­semitism was. ​“A Pol­ish nation­al­ist could make a case: such-and-such per­cent­age of mer­chants are Jew­ish. These Jew­ish mer­chants com­pete with Catholic ones. Or: such-and-such num­ber of uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents are Jews, so we need quo­tas to ensure that there are enough spots for non-Jew­ish stu­dents. But today?” he asked, look­ing around the table. ​“Less than a tenth of one per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion, and even that tiny minor­i­ty is Jew­ish only by … by … ” 

“Blood?” Tata offered. 

“Exact­ly. Why then in such a real­i­ty is a child harassed on her way to school?” 

Aunt sat up a bit straighter in her seat. She looked around the table, as if giv­ing some­one else the oppor­tu­ni­ty to answer. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, no one dared. ​“You see, my dear Ezra, in a coun­try like ours, with an anti­se­mit­ic tra­di­tion but no Jews, the xeno­pho­bia takes on inter­est­ing nuances … ” She looked at each of us before she went on. ​“Instead of actu­al Jews, we have myth­i­cal ones. Myths are unver­i­fi­able — that is their strength. Because Jews don’t exist, they are everywhere.” 

“It’s a para­dox,” offered Mama. 

“Not a para­dox,” Aunt cor­rect­ed. ​“The essence of the myth. It’s safe to say that the major­i­ty of Poles have nev­er come across such a thing as a Jew in their lives. But stop the aver­age Pole in an aver­age vil­lage and ask him how many Jews there are in Poland and he’ll tell you he’s sur­round­ed. He los­es his job: it’s the Jews. His chil­dren don’t lis­ten to him: they’ve fall­en under the influ­ence of Jews. His wife wants to wear jeans: Jew­ish pro­pa­gan­da. He can’t afford the jeans his vain wife wants: Jew­ish greed. His vain wife gets old and ugly, Jews, his kid fails high school exams, Jews, he slips on the ice on the way to work: Jews, Jews, Jews. Jews every­where he turns, and there is no end to the mis­chief they can get up to. And with myths like that, well, it’s a mir­a­cle our sweet Julia makes it to school alive.” 

“Now,” said Tata, and I could hear what it cost him to mod­u­late his voice. ​“Let’s not allow our Amer­i­can guest to for­get that Poles have a very strong tra­di­tion of fight­ing against anti­semitism as well. Many, many peo­ple risked their lives to save their neigh­bors dur­ing the war. We’re a peo­ple with a his­to­ry of extra­or­di­nary brav­ery, as well as, well … the unfor­tu­nate real­i­ty my sis­ter speaks of.” 

“But your Com­mu­nists,” wailed the jour­nal­ist, his eyes wet again in frus­tra­tion. ​“Isn’t the point that Com­mu­nists don’t rec­og­nize eth­nic dif­fer­ences? Not just Marx, but Lenin, even Stal­in! They vowed to erad­i­cate xeno­pho­bia, anti­semitism, racism — ” 

“Ah, the Com­mu­nists. The Com­mu­nists are always in the lead,” Estera cut in. ​“Before the war they took the lead in fight­ing anti­semitism. Now they take the lead in chas­ing out Jews.” 

“No one is chas­ing any­one any­where,” Tata snapped. 

“No?” Aunt made a show of look­ing around the room. ​“Then where on earth is our broth­er, Feliks?” 

Tata rolled his eyes. ​“Bruno?” she called to one side of the room and then the oth­er. ​“Yoo-hoo? Bruno! Where are you, broth­er dear?” She was drunk, now, too. 

“Bruno emi­grat­ed because he want­ed to.” 

“Bruno emi­grat­ed because he couldn’t pub­lish a book.” 

“He couldn’t pub­lish a book because he’d pub­lished six near­ly iden­ti­cal books in the pre­vi­ous six years,” Tata said. 

Aunt tsk-tsked. ​“Ah, that old sib­ling rival­ry.” She turned to Zbig­gy and me. ​“I hope you boys don’t suf­fer from such a nasty affliction.” 

“Dar­ling,” she said, bring­ing the con­ver­sa­tion back to Julia. ​“Your only job is to make the sit­u­a­tion work for you. You mustn’t let any of the non­sense in this coun­try stop you from mak­ing a wor­thy career for your­self. You’re del­i­cate — I can see that from a mile away. You want peo­ple to like you. Well, it doesn’t mat­ter if peo­ple like you. They have to respect you.” 

Julia nod­ded gravely. 

“Oh, don’t scare the poor child,” Mama said. ​“You’re a love­ly girl, Julecz­ka, you’ll do per­fect­ly fine just as you are.” 

Estera flushed at hav­ing been con­tra­dict­ed by the likes of our moth­er. ​“My point is that Julia is a smart girl as well as love­ly. We don’t want her matur­ing into a … ” She took a sip of wine as she thought about what it was, exact­ly, she didn’t want Julia to mature into. ​“An une­d­u­cat­ed sow who can do noth­ing more than cook and clean and raise some man’s brats.” 

“Estera,” Mama’s wan­der­ing eye twitched. ​“Are you saying … ?” 

“I said not a sin­gle word about you, dar­ling, please. ​“Don’t let’s be para­noid, now.” 

Tata poured Mama more wine.

Aunt turned to Julia and addressed her in Hebrew. She nod­ded approv­ing­ly when Julia answered. ​“That’s set­tled, then. I’ll be hav­ing lunch with Julia next week when I’m in Łódź.” 

A pang of jeal­ousy tore through me. I made a men­tal note to put away Aunt’s per­verse Amer­i­can sto­ries. It clear­ly made no dif­fer­ence to her whether I read them. 

__________

A week remained before Aunt was sched­uled to return to Milano. She had tak­en me out with her exact­ly once, to the tailor’s, and only, it seemed, so I’d car­ry her bag. 

I was on my way back from the bath­room on Sat­ur­day morn­ing when I caught sight of Aunt reflect­ed in the mir­ror Mama had hung in the hall­way in place of the Black Madon­na. She stood bare­foot in front of my broth­ers’ chest of draw­ers, wear­ing a pink tow­el-like gar­ment with an elas­ti­cized top seam. Aunt was Tata’s old­er sis­ter; she had to be near­ly fifty, but her body was lean and boyish.

“Goldilocks,” she called, star­tling me. 

I stepped sheep­ish­ly into her doorway. 

“What brings you to my lair, my fine young fellow?” 

“I just want­ed to see what you were doing,” I said, hat­ing the des­per­a­tion in my voice. 

“I’m primp­ing, dar­ling.” She held a lit­tle bowl in her hand, with a met­al wand lean­ing against its edge. ​“Dye­ing my hair, to be pre­cise. I miss my col­orist far more than I ever did my hus­band. Such a bore to be old. Do try to put it off as long as you can.” 

She smiled then, a vul­ner­a­ble smile I hadn’t seen before. I took it as an invi­ta­tion to come in and sat down at the edge of Zbiggy’s bed.

“What col­or is your hair naturally?” 

“Ah, well, if you’ve had a life like mine, gray. Nat­u­ral­ly gray.” 

“And you don’t like it gray?” 

“Of course I don’t like it gray. It’s bad for busi­ness, bad for love. Bad for everything.” 

She part­ed her hair and leaned into her reflec­tion. Using the wand, she applied the cream to the hair at her scalp. ​“Maybe you’d like to help? I can’t at all see what I’m doing in the back.” 

“Oh. I wouldn’t want to mess it up.” 

“You wouldn’t ​‘mess it up,’ though, now, would you?” 

“No,” I said, straight­en­ing up. 

“Just don’t drip it on the rug. Your moth­er is par­tial to her shmatas.” 

She hand­ed me the bowl, placed an old tow­el on the rug at the foot of the bed, and sat down on the floor. I worked as care­ful­ly as I could, mov­ing her thick hair aside, search­ing out the white bits and daub­ing them with the beige cream. I’d nev­er before been so close to a woman in a state of such near nudity.

“You have very sen­si­tive fin­gers, Maks.” 

“Oh.” 

“That’s a good thing.” 

“Okay.” 

“Now. Are you done?” 

“I think so.” 

“‘Yes, Aunt Estera,’ or ​‘No, Aunt Estera.’” 

“Yes, Aunt Estera.” 

“Shall we do you next?” 

“Me?” 

She turned and smiled up at me. She might have been a young girl, with her hair black­ened by the dye and pushed away from her face. I hadn’t not­ed the pale freck­les on the bridge of her nose, and the sur­pris­ing green flecks in her gray eyes. ​“No rea­son not to.” 

“If you think it’s okay … ” 

“Who am I to say what’s okay, not okay?” 

“But do you think it’ll look good?” 

She con­sid­ered my ques­tion. ​“It might lend you some­thing. A cer­tain grav­i­tas. It’s worth a try.”

Aunt’s nails raked pleas­ant­ly across my scalp; the cool cream sent chills down my back even as the acrid smell made my eyes water. As she worked her way slow­ly around my head, I final­ly got a chance to tell her my impres­sions of the sto­ries she’d sent. ​“What’s fun­ny,” I said, ​“is that there are all these Pol­ish words in there.” 

“Pol­ish words? That can’t be right.” ​“No, real­ly, I’ll show you. They’re Pol­ish words, bad­ly spelled. The same mean­ing, but off by a let­ter or two.” 

Moments lat­er Aunt chuck­led. ​“Maybe,” she said, her voice still full of laugh­ter, ​“it’s Pol­ish spelling that’s ​‘bad,’ hmm?” 

Aunt then told me about the writer of the sto­ries: a young Amer­i­can she’d per­son­al­ly tak­en around Milano when he came for the release of his Ital­ian edi­tion a few years ear­li­er. She described how angry peo­ple were with him for spread­ing a view of Jews that would, as they put it, ​“warm the hearts of Nazis.”

“Why,” she asked, wav­ing her dye-soaked wand, ​“shouldn’t a Jew­ish char­ac­ter have the right to be every bit as sex-crazed, every bit as human, every bit as wicked, as any­one else in the world?” 

I had no answer for her. I was still recov­er­ing from the shock of real­iz­ing there might be oth­er, bet­ter spellings of the Pol­ish words I’d used my entire life. 

Aunt bathed while my col­or set, and when I’d rinsed and tow­el-dried my own hair, she put a bon­net on my head that had attached to it a hose that spout­ed warm air. 

Then she launched into her own sto­ry. Her start as a clean­ing lady at a Milano pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny after escap­ing Poland dur­ing the war, leav­ing her own trans­la­tions of Czesław Miłosz on the boss’s desk at night, and sub­se­quent­ly being pro­mot­ed to a job as his per­son­al sec­re­tary. And years lat­er, becom­ing one of the company’s top lit­er­ary agents. She her­self had been respon­si­ble for pub­lish­ing Pri­mo Levi over a decade after his book had been reject­ed by her pre­de­ces­sor at the com­pa­ny, one Natalia Ginzburg, a woman whom Aunt thought over­rat­ed as a writer, and com­pro­mised as a human. 

Aunt removed the bon­net from my head. Her eyes sparkled, the green flecks in them flit­ting like min­nows in a shal­low stream. 

She turned me to face the mir­ror. My cheeks were still chub­by, my hips still near­ly as wide as my shoul­ders. But my hair! A rich­ly pig­ment­ed, hand­some brown, just like Aunt’s. The dye had tak­en some of the kink out of it, too, and now Aunt brushed it away from my face and smoothed it against my scalp. I saw her then: 

Aunt, in my own face. A glimpse of myself as I might one day be, if only I could escape some­how from the medi­oc­rity that sur­round­ed me.

“Bel­lo,” she whis­pered in my ear, then took my hand in hers. 

“Feliks,” she called, as she guid­ed me down the hall­way toward the kitchen, where my par­ents were hav­ing their tea, as yet igno­rant of my trans­for­ma­tion. ​“Feliks, look! I had total­ly for­got­ten your fat phase. He is a Haas­man after all!”