Revolution Baby Read online

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2013 by Les Editions du Boréal

  Published by special arrangement with 2 Seas Literary Agency

  First Publication 2014 by Europa Editions

  First publication 2014 by Europa Editions

  Translation by Alison Anderson

  Original Title: L’enfant qui sauvait parler la langue des chiens

  Translation copyright © 2014 by Europa Editions

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Québec through La Société de développement des entreprises culturelles (SODEC).

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Cover photo © Keystone-France/Getty

  ISBN 9781609452094

  Joanna Gruda

  REVOLUTION BABY

  Translated from the French

  by Alison Anderson

  To Julek, thanks a thousand times over for your thrilling life

  To Geneviève, who loved children with periwinkle eyes

  PROLOGUE

  When I was little, I had parents. And an aunt and an uncle, too. Later, I was put in an orphanage. And there was the war, the same as for everyone. After the war, I had parents. And an aunt and an uncle, too. But not the same ones as before.

  My story begins on March 17, 1929. It was a very important day for me, because that was the day my existence was put to the vote.

  There we were in Moscow, in the middle of a meeting of a Polish Communist Party cell. Third matter on the agenda: Comrade Helena Rappoport’s pregnancy. Might she be allowed to continue in her state of gravidity, or must she undergo an abortion? The debate was lively. Some people took a very dim view of her pregnancy, for it might incite other women caught up in the struggle for the proletarian revolution to reproduce (an act considered to be highly anti-revolutionary during those troubled years). Then there were those who believed that it was a good idea to bring future revolutionaries into the world, offspring who would know how to carry on the work they had all committed to. The response to the latter was that they were taking a pessimistic view of the future, for it was obvious that when these children were old enough to take part in the class struggle, communism would already have conquered the majority of European countries. Comrade Helena Rappoport and the other comrades with procreative designs would then have ample time to populate all those countries where everyone would be living in happiness and equality.

  After two hours of intense deliberation, it came time to vote. Verdict: Comrade Rappoport would not be obliged to terminate her pregnancy. She would not, however, be permitted to look after the child once it was born, for that would mean putting aside her political commitment. She would be allowed to decide for herself, and if she so desired in consultation with the child’s father—Comrade Michał Gruda—what was to become of the child.

  Said child made his appearance in the world on November 3, 1929, exactly ten days after the famous Black Tuesday crash, incontestable proof that capitalism had gone seriously astray.

  My father, who defended my life with far greater virulence than my mother at the meeting where my future, or my absence of future, was discussed, did what every good Pole would do upon the birth of his first child: he ran out to share the news with all his friends, and celebrated the event each time with a little glass of vodka.

  And so it was that years later, when I went to study in the USSR and used the occasion to try and obtain, at last, some papers attesting to the proof of my birth, I learned that I did not exist . . . at least, not under the name of Julian Gruda. The civil servant who handled my request informed me of the existence of a certain Ludwik Gruda, born in Moscow on November 3, 1929.

  I called my parents in Warsaw. After they listened to my story, my mother came to the conclusion that, because they had oscillated for so long between the names of two famous Polish revolutionaries—Ludwik Warynski and Julian Marchlewski—my father, who had celebrated my birth all night with straight shots of vodka, must have got his heroes mixed up when he went to the public records office. And once he’d sobered up he must have forgotten which name he had written down on my declaration of birth. If I hadn’t been in such a rush to have papers with my real name on them, I would surely have been amused by the anecdote, particularly as I found it quite hard to imagine my father drunk.

  So that is how my life began, with a vote by the Polish Communist Party. In my favor. Fetuses of the world, unite!

  Now that the outcome of the vote regarding my right to exist has been established, I suggest we travel back in time, to the year 1902, more than twenty-seven years before my birth, in order to meet Maria Demke, the lady who would never have the good fortune of becoming my grandmother.

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  Life Before

  Spring, 1902. Warsaw. Maria Demke was pregnant. She already had three daughters: Anna, Fruzia, and Karolka. The youngest was fourteen. After Karolka’s birth, Maria’s belly had little desire to grow round again. And then at the age of forty-one Maria discovered that a new life had come to curl up inside her.

  At first, since it was winter, Maria wore an ample pelisse which enabled her to hide her condition. She was burdened by her growing womb, her swelling breasts, but it was not only her pregnancy that filled her with shame. Roughly one month before Maria learned of her state, Anna, her eldest, had informed her that she was expecting. Her eldest daughter: not even engaged, refusing to say a thing about the father’s identity, with no intention of getting married, and perfectly happy with the state of events. When Maria realized that she too was pregnant, it was as if the sky had fallen on her head all over again. “What did I do to deserve these two misfortunes, one hard upon the other?” she asked a God who seemed endowed suddenly with a strange sense of humor. Gradually, however, she let herself go to this latest pregnancy, enjoying her renewed fertility; she was even delighted with this new opportunity to give her husband the son he had always dreamt of. She eventually came to view this new child as a gift from heaven, and every day she apologized to God for having berated Him.

  One April morning, when her belly already seemed too heavy to her, Maria awoke before her husband. Soundlessly she slipped out of the sheets and went to prepare breakfast for the entire family. A first ray of sunshine filtered tentatively into the house through the kitchen window. Fruzia, the early riser among the Demke girls, went to join her mother. She was helping out, going to fetch water from the well, setting the table. When everything was ready, Maria asked her to go and wake her father. Then changed her mind: “Never mind, I’ll go.”

  She didn’t know why, when she had so much to do, she had insisted on going to wake her husband herself. She would often have the opportunity to praise the Lord, later on, for this gesture which saved her daughter from the painful discovery of her lifeless father.

  Consequently, Mr. Demke never had the opportunity to meet his one and only son, the son who would become my father. During the last four months of her pregnancy, Maria wept every day, for she could not imagine life without her husband, the gentlest man she had ever met. Three months after Anna gave birth, Maria delivered her first son, in great pain. When the newborn child was laid on her belly and she heard, “Congratulations, Maria, it’s a boy,” she burst into tears. It tore her heart out, not to be able to share this happiness with her husband. And she went on crying, while nursing, bathing the baby, cooking, cleani
ng . . . until she had emptied herself of all the life left inside her, and had died of sorrow, four months after the birth of her son, the adorable little Emil.

  It was Anna, the eldest Demke girl, who took the child into her home after Maria’s death, and placed him on her left breast, while she placed Stach, her little bastard, on the right. And so Emil’s childhood was spent between Anna, his sister-mother, and Stach, his brother-nephew . . . No father to speak of, whether temporary or regulation, in this quite ordinary life, with its everyday poverty, which was the lot of many of those who had come into Warsaw from the countryside to seek their fortune.

  Anna was round and enveloping, and did everything she could so that her “little men” would lack for nothing. In the beginning, when she had to look after the two babies all day long, her sisters, who worked in a factory, gave her a bit of money to get along. Then Mr. Litynski, a widower who lived a few doors down and seemed to take kindly to his unmarried neighbor, told her about a friend who was in charge of distributing newspapers in the trams.

  “Mr. Wolski is always on the lookout for new employees. It’s not an ideal job for a woman like you, but at least it would enable you to clothe your boys in winter.”

  Anna liked the idea, and she already pictured herself criss-crossing Warsaw all day long, meeting lots of people. When Mr. Wolski saw this strong, smiling woman stride into his office, he did not hesitate for a second. A few days later Anna hired a young girl from the country to look after the boys, and she began her new trade.

  Stach and Emil had a happy life, and it never occurred to them that things should be otherwise, that there should be a man at home, that Anna should not have to work all day long on her feet, running from one tram to the next. They ate when they were hungry, they were not cold in winter and, when they were sad, they could always curl up against Anna’s two huge breasts, for they knew that there they would be safe from everything.

  Until one day their life was turned upside down: Anna had a grave accident. She fell beneath a tram, and had to have her leg amputated. Emil, for all that he was only eleven years old, decided that henceforth it would be up to Stach and him to take care of Anna.

  Very quickly it became clear that Emil was more resourceful than Stach, who had more of an artist’s temperament. He managed to convince Mr. Litynski to speak to the newspaper vendor about him.

  “I can distribute the papers in Anna’s place.”

  “It’s not as simple as all that. Look what happened to your mother, a woman who has her head on her shoulders, after all, and who knows how to get on in life. And you’re only eleven.”

  “I can stay on my feet for a long time. And I have a good voice. And I have a cheerful face to boot, everyone has told me as much.”

  “I don’t know. I can mention it to him, but he might not feel comfortable with the idea of having—”

  “And does he feel comfortable with the idea that one of his former employees has only one leg and can’t support her two children—one of whom, moreover, is her own brother?”

  “There’s a better solution, in my opinion. You should persuade your mother to come and live with me. We could make a nice family.”

  “All right, I’ll tell her, but only if you promise me that you’ll tell the newspaper gentleman about me and persuade him to meet me.”

  And so it was. Mr. Litynski persuaded his friend to meet Emil who, in turn, convinced him that he would be an excellent newspaper vendor. But Emil did not persuade Anna to go and live with Mr. Litynski; he didn’t put much effort into fulfilling his part of the bargain, because he felt Anna didn’t need a third man in her life.

  Emil was eleven years old. With his resourcefulness and his cheerful face, he was earning more money than Fruzia and Karolka at the factory. He considered himself to be the man of the house, and he took the fate of his family very seriously, a family consisting of Anna, Stach, Fruzia, and Karolka. He did not merely sell newspapers, he also used his numerous trips on the tram to carry letters or packages from one end of town to the other.

  1914. War broke out. The first of the world wars. As usual, when the great European powers confronted one another, Poland was one of their favorite playing fields. In fact, Poland didn’t even exist at that point in time, because in the eighteenth century the Prussians, the Austrians, and the Russians had turned it into a pretty little puzzle, and they had been having too much fun swapping bits back and forth. Even now the Russian and German armies were waging war on the territory that used to be Poland.

  Newspapers sold out quickly in such hard times. In just under two hours Emil could earn what used to take him all day. Delivering parcels also brought in a lot of money, because people didn’t leave their homes as readily, and Emil would even agree, for a slight additional sum, to transport parcels and letters after curfew.

  One day a very important Russian man offered Emil a large sum of money to deliver a letter to his son, who was at the Russo-German front, to the west of Warsaw.

  Emil, duly impressed by the fortune he had just been offered, wasted no time embarking on his mission. He took a few newspapers along with him, because he figured that the soldiers might want to read about the war they were risking their lives to fight. Bullets whistling overhead, little Emil made his way to the soldiers in their trenches. And while finding the recipient for his parcel proved more arduous than he expected, selling newspapers turned out to be extraordinarily easy.

  That day Emil went home, opened the little leather bag he always wore slung across his shoulder, and spilled the contents onto the kitchen table. Anna looked at him gravely.

  “Where did you get all that money?”

  “I earned it, selling papers.”

  “Don’t lie to me, please.”

  “I swear! It’s because of the war, and with the front so nearby, people want to know what’s going on, and the papers sell like hotcakes.”

  With an easy conscience—who could suspect a lie in what Emil had just told Anna?—the boy climbed into bed, his back to the wall, and set to dreaming about his day, the finest of his entire life, the fullest, the most important. “I’m a war hero,” he thought.

  For those few months while the Germans and the Russians were fighting outside Warsaw, Emil went every day to the trenches to sell papers to the Russian soldiers. Every time, he came back with his bag full to bursting; the soldiers were impressed with the little boy’s courage, and sometimes gave him as much as ten times what the paper was worth. And he used the opportunity to learn Russian.

  He could stay for hours in the trenches with the soldiers, waiting for a lull so that he could leave again, sometimes crawling, sometimes running as fast as he could. Emil liked the camaraderie that reigned among the soldiers, the solidarity shown by those young men who did not know whether they would ever see their homes or their families again. He loved to listen to them, to play dice with them, to smoke a butt or two. And they liked the little twelve-year-old, with his admirable courage and his bundle of anecdotes and jokes. Those few months would be etched on Emil’s memory in a separate little frame: a sweet memory, with touches of fraternity, the curls of cigarette smoke, and stories told in confidence that were not really for his ears.

  Not long after the war, Poland had to put together a new army, so Emil, now eighteen, joined up. “It’s a good job, with a decent salary; I already know what war is like, and I’m not afraid. And anyway, we are bound to have a few years of peace ahead of us, after the long war we’ve just been through.”

  He was wrong. Already in 1920 he had to fight the Bolsheviks, who had managed to advance as far as Warsaw. On one side of the Vistula was the young army of the Second Republic of Poland—inexperienced, badly organized and, above all, outnumbered. On the other side, thousands of Red Army soldiers were preparing to invade Warsaw. Then, unexpectedly, the Bolshevik troops withdrew and raised the siege on the town. In the history of Poland this episode is kno
wn as the “miracle on the Vistula,” because so many Poles had prayed for Warsaw to remain Polish and free. Just the once wouldn’t hurt: the Good Lord felt sorry for Poland and took her side.

  During the siege Emil was fascinated by the enemy and their particular ideology. He had very animated discussions on the subject, because the other soldiers didn’t like to see the pertinence of their war called into question. But Emil was not entirely convinced that everything about the enemy camped on the far side of the Vistula was evil. Since he spoke better Russian than most of the Polish soldiers, he was often called on to act as an interpreter with the prisoners of war. Sometimes he would go back to see them again after the interrogation was over and ask them about the situation in their country, and about the Bolshevik revolution. When the Soviets withdrew from Poland, Emil no longer knew what to think. He was deeply dismayed by the extreme poverty of the Polish peasants and workers. He convinced himself that there was a system where people were equal, and he was prepared to fight to see it triumph in Poland, at the cost of his life if need be. And he was increasingly convinced that only communism could lead to the liberation of the people and to class equality. So not long after he was demobilized, he set off for the office of the Polish Communist Youth, the KZMP, to request a membership card. Which he immediately took to show proudly to his friend Alek, one of the rare communist partisans he had met in the army: together they would celebrate this “historical moment” until the early hours of the morning. Na zdrowie, comrade!

  Emil soon became a fervent member of the Communist Youth. To earn a living, he unearthed a little job with a horticulturist in the Praga quarter in Warsaw, but he then chose a more noble and revolutionary profession: metallurgist. He now officially belonged to the working class, and he devoted every spare moment to the struggle for the cause.