Joe Jezioranski

It seemed to me that my father’s family divided into those who visited us, those that we occasionally had to come into contact with, and those that only my parents knew existed. Of those that visited us, the closest one to me was Aunt Jadwiga. Aunt Jadwiga was the second one of those children of my grandfather that survived. Of course, when she came to visit us at the end of the first year and stayed with us in my father’s study, it soon became obvious that she could not stay long away from the mountains, as she began to bleed from her lungs. She had open tuberculosis. While she was with us, she poured her love (as I said, the Jezioranskis always had to love somebody) onto me of all people. It made me terribly embarrassed. She wanted to stay close to me all the time. She also continually corrected my behavior and prevented me from associating with servants, boys from the village and miscellaneous so-called undesirable people. So everybody was distressed when she had to leave for the mountains except me.

My father arranged to buy her portion of the Byki estate in order that she would have enough money to buy a house in the Tatra mountains [8]. She called the house “Pirlipata,” a name my father found very funny. He wrote a funny poem to commemorate the occasion of the purchase and the naming of the house, and from then on perpetually regretted his sarcasm.

The other “close” relatives were the descendants of grandfather’s – or was it great-grandfather’s – siblings. These still belonged to the group that visited us. Apparently one of the women in my father’s family married Mr Paprocki. Konstanty Paprocki, who was my father’s cousin, had three sons and one daughter. I never knew the oldest of the three sons, but Stach and Kazio used to visit us often.

Stach Paprocki was the doyen of the group of family politicians and patriots. I admired his dog, an English setter. I cannot forget that Stach was a great friend of our family, but as usual, that made me very embarrassed.

8. Part of the Carpathian range, the Tatra mountains separate Poland from Czechoslovakia.

The others in the group of “great patriots” were two brothers, Andrew and Zdzislaw Jezioranski [9]. My father used to worry continually about their future, for no good reason, as both of them did quite well for themselves. The reason for worry was, however, caused by the loss that their mother incurred after the untimely death of their father. He left them an apartment complex in Warsaw. The first world war having just finished, Mrs Jezioranski was in need of resources and decided to sell the house. Then came the disastrous post-war inflation and she lost all her savings. Apparently as the boys grew up, my father made sure that they were employed.

9. Writes under pseudonym Jan Nowak.

Kazio Paprocki was a pediatrician and our lives crossed very closely during the second world war.

Paprocki’s uncle, Kazimierz Jezioranski, was an administrator of the Potocki estate. I remember well his funeral, when we followed the cortege in my father’s company car. I remember it because it was the first time I had seen a dead person and it made a greatly sobering impression on this six year old boy.

My father seemed to have an innumerable set of aunts, who were supposed to be visited periodically. Auntie Lucy was blind and lived in an institution. Two “young at heart” sisters – I don’t remember their names – lived in an apartment for which my father paid the rent. The younger one of the two was 92 when I had to visit them and be slobbered all over. Then there was Aunt Agnes who visited us occasionally and could never persuade my mother that she could live with us and take care of us. She insisted that she had long experience. One of the children that she took care of fell out off a balcony, another one was crippled by a falling piece of furniture and the third one taken to the hospital after a food poisoning. Aunt Agnes believed that her experience qualified her to avoid many accidents.

In those early years I never realized that I had a half sister who was already fully grown up.

The impression that I had of my father was that he never had a tool in his hand in his life. Some of my mother’s stories related to his clumsiness, especially when he joined the army at the time of the Polish-Russian war [10]. Others related to his conservative dress, inherent pessimism and orthodox outlook on life.

It was impossible to find a subject that my father did not know about. When young, he intended to be a composer. He used to go to a concert at least a couple of times a month; I was about seven when I began to accompany him to Sunday matinees. Most of our house was decorated by original paintings of the contemporary Polish painters selected by my father. His bedside was covered with literary magazines, mostly Polish but some French and German. I could always rely on him to suggest my reading and to criticize the books that I had just read, including the earliest children’s books. I loved going for walks with him. I bombarded him with questions, which he answered patiently.

In the garden his speciality was his roses. He used to get up early and water and spray them. I walked with him and discovered their names. Roses were planted all around the lawns and behind the mock orange bushes. There were climbing roses on the fence and bush roses in the back garden. Through the French door, one could come out from the dining room onto the terrace. Around the terrace there were polyanthi and tea roses. Water had to be kept in barrels, so as not to shock the roses in the morning.

As the economic conditions worsened and after my father’s sickness, more people were employed to take care of the garden, to pump the water, to prepare us for Holy Communion, etc. The poverty in the village was severe.

10. After the first world war, the Polish eastern borders were not defined. A war was waged between Poland and Russia to establish the boundary. At one time the Russian troops approached Warsaw but were repulsed. The defensive battle is called in Poland ‘A miracle on Vistula river’ (the Russians reached the river only to be pushed back into the Russian plains). The war culminated in a treaty of Riga in which the Polish-Russian boundary was agreed upon. This boundary was to be respected by both countries until September 17, 1939 when Poland was attacked by the Soviet troops.

My father claimed to be a non-believer, yet his story had a theme: he seemed to have marvelled at the power of the human mind. He was forever reading the philosophers, from Thomas Aquinas to Nietzsche and Wronski. It was an utter happiness to go with him to church. He would select a High Mass in a church with a superb choir (St Ann’s [11] for instance). Of course the excursion to a coffee house after the Mass helped as well. I used to select French pastry and chocolate with whipped cream.

11. St Ann’s was also the official church for the RC students of the Warsaw institutions of higher learning.

Two years after he bought the new house, my father became very ill. It seemed he had a wound on his toe which would not heal. At first my mother would keep us away from him, but I would sneak into his room and talk to him for hours. My father taught me chess and reading and innumerable card games. I was all of four years old.

After seeing a number of doctors to no avail, my mother decided to ask her relative Dr Brodowski to see my father. Dr Brodowski sent him to an internal specialist who diagnosed my father’s trouble as diabetes. After a series of insulin injections and some ministering to the external wound, my father was able to walk, or rather hobble, around.

Then my parents left to stay in southern Poland while a relative of my mother, Aunt Maria [12] looked after us. My brother was now going to school every day and I complained and moaned about my hard life. When my mother came home for a few days, she decided that it was no use to keep me at home, and arranged for me to go to kindergarten.

12. Maria Jedrzejewska.

My father would not stay away for too long, as he felt that the insurance company he was managing was in difficulties. These were the depression years and financial troubles were universal. As I found out later, the major shareholder of the WTU [13], the company that my father managed, decided to sell some of their shares. My father was advising them against the sale as he felt that the German interests were aspiring to obtain a majority of the shares. Despite his advice the Swiss permitted the Germans to obtain the majority holding.

13. The Warszawskie Towarzystwo Ubezpieczen (WTU, the Warsaw Insurance Company) was one of the largest private insurance companies in Poland.

In addition to his sickness, my father now was unhappily dealing with a demanding new owner. His retreat now was his garden and Mlociny. He began to plant groups of ornamental bushes: Japanese maples, weeping willows, and acacia, golden privets and flowering fruit trees. At the borders of bush groups there lay azaleas and lilacs, and lower he decided to plant bulbs: tulips, daffodils, hyacinths and others.

In front of the house a small pond full of lilies and green-bladed plants was surrounded by a rock garden with interspersed pink carnations. Beyond, a wooden garden house with square roof and open sides permitted him to sit with the sore foot raised on a stool. The garden, spacious and picturesque before, now looked lavish and full. Here he rested and wrestled with his office problem while my mother insisted that he take at least one day off during the week.

Things were changing outside our house as well. A group of newcomers – a director of Bank of Poland (Nowak), an inventor of the steam regenerator (Stamirowski), two owners of leather factories (Weigle), the head steward of Warsaw’s racecourse (Bystram), and my father – formed a society for the promotion of the Mlociny environment. Money was solicited and strings pulled to create a system of gravel-covered roads and sidewalks between the houses and a series of storm sewers. Local labour was employed in an effort to improve the depressed economic conditions.

When my brother went to school, I was lonesome and desolate. Things got worse with my father’s sickness and my parents’ absence. Although I liked Aunt Maria and her daughters, I became very hard to manage. Finally my mother decided to send me to school. I was not quite four years old. Generally one of Aunt Maria’s daughters would take me and my brother to school while travelling themselves to university or work. This duty was taken over by my mother when she came back.

By my second year at school, my brother was eight (practically grown up), and we traveled often by ourselves in the train and tramway to school. The trouble was that the kindergarten finished much earlier than the third grade and I often had to wait, sitting alone with toys and paints and what-not, until he was going home or until I was picked up by somebody.

A day came when my brother was on some school excursion, my mother thought that my father was going to pick me up, and my father was busy. That was the day when I found out that the lady running the private school, full of efficiency and self control, was uneasy when placed face to face with a small child. The whole school was closing. As I was the only entity left, she put me on the balcony of her apartment and went in to telephone my father. I never felt so lonely in my life. Luckily things got sorted out and my mother rushed in to be confronted by an angry school manager.

I was not to be beaten by adversity. I was now more than five years old. I would sneak out after the kindergarten and travel home alone. Since I was always equipped with candy money, I had no problem, but can you imagine the storm that raged when neither the school manager nor my parents could find out where I was? Now my mother regularly waited for me before school was finished, which anyway was an achievement.

I was a great hero the year I went to the first grade. Having spent a lot of time with my sick father, I knew how to read, write, do arithmetic, in fact do anything the teachers could throw at me. Despite being very small, I was also socially overdeveloped, as I spent almost three years in kindergarten.

Near the end of the school year “Marshal” Pilsudski (the Polish dictator) [14] died. The funeral ceremonies were rather enjoyable. My father got us a space in one of the companies’ offices facing the street that was part of the parade route (Krakowskie Przedmiescie). The parade took three hours. Luckily my mother came well-provided with food and tidbits. I sat on a chair placed on top of the desk near the second-story window facing the street. I got a big kick out of seeing a number of my friends’ parents walking somewhere behind the cortege. A Roumanian honor guard exercised a parade march that happened to be much faster than the procession. The guard was perpetually catching up to those in front of them. Polish cavalry and horse-driven artillery filled the street with clatter, pomp and circumstance but made the rest of the cortege walk gingerly between the horse droppings.

14. Pilsudski, originally a member of the Polish Socialist Party, aligned himself with Austro-Hungary to fight Russia. He led independent Poland twice, from 1918 to 1922 and from 1926 to 1935, with basically dictatorial powers.

The summer was probably the happiest summer of my life. At the end of the school year my father took my brother for a rail trip around Poland while my mother took me to see her mother in the Polish Tatra mountains. We walked up some easy slopes and bathed in the icy springs. We paraded in the horse-driven carriages with drivers dressed in their native costume. We sat in the sunny streets of Zakopane eating mountain strawberries and cream. A few weeks later we all gathered to spent the rest of the summer in our garden.

This was the year I was old enough to make many new friends. The huge cherry trees in our garden were certainly a big help in attracting the children of the neighborhood. Sadly there were many girls of my age, but not many boys. For a part of the summer, I enjoyed the friendship of the Nowaks. The girl was my age. Due to an accident in her childhood one of her legs was stiff at the knee. Their mother died early in their childhood. They were looked after by Mr Nowak’s sister who was a very stern-looking character. The attraction of their house, which stood in the low part of suburbia, was a tennis court.

We were “playing” tennis. As none of us could really hit the ball in the right direction, the game meant a lot of running around and chasing the ball. The extreme concentration made us forget our natural needs. As we stopped for a moment Janusz suggested that we go into the bushes. I was fresh from my first Communion and would not do any bad thing. Anyway I was afraid of his aunt.

“No, let’s run to the bathroom at home.”

We hurried and just barely made it into the bathroom on the ground floor. It was fun to try to hit each other’s stream as we emptied ourselves.

“Open up this minute! What are you doing there?” It was his aunt.

“Just a minute! We are almost finished,” blurted out Janusz under strain.

“Open up right now! I want to know what is going on there!” Janusz stepped to the door while I was not able to finish properly.

“What is the meaning of this? Why are you both here? What are you doing?”

Neither of us could answer. Was it not obvious? I thought. How do I tell her, without giving offence?

“You are a bad boy! You should not be leading Janusz astray! Go home this minute!” Now she was addressing me directly.

While going home I tried to work out what I did wrong.

Can’t be the act itself? Surely all people had to do it!

Must have been the crossing of the streams... But how did she know? We were almost finished!

As I got home I was confronted by my mother. She wanted to know all about it. Apparently Miss Nowak asked her to keep me away from Janusz and she was not going to mention it to anybody, but she suggested that my mother have a serious talk with me. Anyway I told her all about it and I asked her whether crossing the streams was really that bad and whether I had to mention it in confession. I did not appreciate her laughing and ran to my room crying.

Anyway somehow we got a volleyball court. Miss Nowak never again talked to me or my mother, but the children continued to play with us and my mother attempted to convince me that I did nothing wrong. I was not sure.

Later on I consulted my brother and our next door neighbor, who went to high school. He tried to explain something which I could not understand at all. The only thing I got out of it that the children were born through the genitals. After having a thorough look at mine I thought it was a joke! No child could be that small.

When I inquired from my mother, she explained that the mother carried the child under her heart for nine months and then God softened her bones to let the child out. Now I knew.

And so the wonderful summer continued. I discovered the surroundings, and found interesting people living in other houses, and going to Holy Communion, learning to speak foreign languages, rummaging surreptitiously through remaining empty houses, riding on bicycles (my brother got a new one and I inherited his tiny two-wheeler), baking potatoes in the ashes, walking through the forests.

Now it was autumn and I went to second grade. I sat next to a girl who was almost nine years old and virtually twice my size. Furthermore some of the boys in the “senior grades” made sure they spent the class breaks with her. I was mortified, scared, chicken...

I made some friends. My closest friend was Jacek Szpotanski. We played during most free periods and he taught me many games while I helped him with his early homework. He was a heavy-set fellow, good at sports and any outdoor activity. As he grew up he became a muscular handsome boy with a lot of inherent aggressiveness. Although we were very close while in the same school, a few years later when we met at the swimming pool it was my brother who recognized him. He was active in the underground later, but I have no idea what happen to him after the Warsaw Uprising. Another friend of mine was Kotek Plucinski. Kotek was a much lighter boy, rather quiet and shy. I remember very little of either of them. Somehow my teenage years when I felt very lonesome made me drop all my early friends.

Kotek Plucinski had a birthday party, where I found out some people lived in dark-looking apartments, but could have fun nevertheless.

Now the other party was different. Jacek Szpotanski’s father had a factory of plumbing equipment. When his birthday came we were invited to his big house at the shore of the river on the outskirts of Warsaw (Saska Kepa). We were to sleep overnight. When I went to the bathroom it appeared that there two places where you could empty yourself. I decided on the unusual one, thinking that the usual one was for the “heavy” stuff. When I tried to flush, I discovered that there were two taps instead of a normal handle. Undeterred, I turned on the tap on the left and received a heavy shower! This was my education about what the bidet is all about.

In the morning we had a pillow fight. I seemed to be getting the better of Willie, a heavy fellow, son of a cigarette manufacturer, when all at once I was attacked by his sister. Turning around, I grabbed her and pulled her to the floor. While I sat cross-legged holding the girl on the ground, Willie sat on my neck bringing my head with full force to the ground.

A month later the vacations started; the garden was full of flowers and early fruits. I bent over to pick up a strawberry and fell over in pain. My spine had a crack on one of the middle-placed vertebrae. I did not eat strawberries for the next twenty years.