Baltyk Star Rising

Baltyk Star Rising

Eileen Stromberger

Baltyk Star Rising

Copyright © 2017 by Eileen Stromberger

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this book.

ISBN: (978-1-365-73341-3)

For all those near and dear

to me from the city of Rypin.

Prologue

The Beacon of Rypin

It was just past three o’clock in the afternoon and daylight was fading fast from the gray overcast sky. Snowflakes had started to fall, gently at first but quickly gaining in momentum and number. The progress of their dusky dance could be seen in the soft radiance of the streetlamps. With the coming of darkness, lights in apartments were switched on one by one casting a shadowy warm glow outside through windows strung with lace curtains.

Streets and sidewalks, already blanketed in white, did not deter the cars on their routes or the people on their errands from continuing their Saturday business. The residents of the small Polish city were accustomed to the wintry weather of mid-December and the short hours of daylight. During this time of year days began and ended in darkness.

By four o’clock the light had completely disappeared from the sky and was now only a memory. The sidewalks, though, were still full of people bustling in and out of the shops on the ground floors of apartment buildings. There were the last loaves of bread and poppy seed cake to buy in the bakery and chops and rings of kiełbasy to get at the meat market for that evening’s meal. The need for haste was felt since all the shopkeepers would close their doors in another hour. If a customer failed to make it by the standard closing time, it would be that person’s bad luck.

Carrying bags brimming with groceries, the people slowly made their way back to their homes on the pavement that was increasing in slickness. Some trudged up the steep main street to the upper part of the city, the newer part with the more recently built apartment complexes and townhouses. Others slid their feet like inexperienced ice skaters down the sidewalk to the older, lower section of the city.

All ages were represented in this urban winter trek. The elderly linked arms with the young to keep from slipping and dropping their shopping bags. Parents not only carried their groceries, but also pulled along their children bundled up in colorful parkas and looking like little Eskimo dolls in small wooden sleds equipped with tiny chairs. If there were older children, they minded their younger siblings while their parents managed the groceries.

It was a good feeling to reach home and the warmth within. Dinner was prepared by the woman of the house and assisted by other family members. No one was excluded from the preparation of the evening meal. The husband tenderized the pork chops or formed the ground beef cutlets that were then fried on the stove by the wife. While husband and wife were occupied with the main dish, the children, if they were old enough, were busy peeling potatoes and chopping dill to be mixed with them. In this society in which men, women, and children had fought side by side against foreign aggressors, there were no strict boundaries that defined men’s work, women’s work, or child’s play. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, even children fought alongside their parents in a noble though futile fight to expel enemy forces from their homeland (a statue of a young boy wearing an adult army helmet and carrying a rifle towering him stands in Warsaw to this day to commemorate the littlest soldiers). Everyone took part in helping out with all tasks around the house and those tasks included dinner.

After the meal was prepared and eaten and the dishes washed, the real excitement of the evening was just about to begin. It was time to dress in one’s best outfit reserved for visiting, to fix one’s hair, and to spray on some fresh smelling cologne or perfume. The snow was still falling steadily outside, no longer a light cover on the pavement but a formidable force to be reckoned with. The depth of the snow posed no great alarm to the townspeople who, all decked out in their finest for a night out, simply pulled on their calf-high boots (for the men) or knee-high boots (for the women) and tackled the thick white wet lying obstinately on the sidewalk. An inconvenience maybe, but one that would not bring life to a halt.

People started trickling to the center of the city. Like the snow, they started to go in small numbers which increased as time went on. By six-thirty in the evening a steady stream of humanity went to the center, either walking down the hill of Mławska Street from the upper part or walking along Warsaw Street from the old section below. Cheerfully and with anticipation, everyone was gravitating to a two storey building of moderate size just off the traffic circle. This unpretentious building painted in pale yellow with brown trim was the heart of the city. This building was the Kino Bałtyk.

In the small city that some years earlier was caught in the grip of the Soviet Iron Curtain, the cinema was the one place where people could go to get a glimpse of life on the outside, to see the places they were restricted from visiting, to see how others in the free and prosperous nations in the West lived. The Kino Bałtyk was a window that opened up little Rypin to the rest of the world. It was a place where people could escape their everyday lives and problems for a couple of hours and live in a world of fantasy.

Although the Iron Curtain was now gone and Poland was enjoying freedom and capitalism long taken for granted in the West, the Kino Bałtyk was still a window to the world beyond Polish borders. It was the beacon of Rypin, metaphorically as well as literally, since it was always lit up on the outside like a steadily burning star to rival the movie stars it presented inside.

As on other nights its lights beckoned people to come and take part in tonight’s social event, for every movie presentation at the Kino Bałtyk was an event. In the snow, a fair number of people had gathered in the small plaza in front of the cinema to chat with friends and catch up on gossip while waiting for others still making their way from across the city.

Among those still making the walk from the upper section were a young couple and their small daughter. The girl could not have been more than six years old and was behaving more properly than was usual for her, a contrast to what she had been only a few hours earlier. At that time, unable to contain her enthusiasm about that evening’s outing, she was jumping on the sofa and running from room to room. The only thing successful in calming her down was her mother’s threat that she would be left behind with her babcia while her parents went by themselves to the Kino Bałtyk. To spend the evening at home with her grandmother while her parents went to the cinema was a fate unacceptable to the girl, and so with that ultimatum made by her mother in mind, she behaved like a well brought up young lady and engaged herself in drawing some pictures, much to the relief of her exasperated mother.

It was completely understandable why Olenka was animated about going out that evening. After all, it was her first time going to the Kino Bałtyk, the wonderful, magical place she heard about from her parents and their friends. She was no longer a baby but a big girl about to take part in this grown up rite of passage. She would see for herself what it was like to have half of Rypin gathered in the plaza in front of the cinema and watch a movie in the theatre for the first time (up to this point she had only watched programs on television). It took all the patience she could muster to get through dinner with her parents and then put up with her mother fussing about what she should wear that evening. Finally, after what seemed like an eon to the small child, it was time to make their way to the cinema.

Olenka’s father could very well have driven the three of them in his Fiat the five minutes it would have taken them to go to the city center, but there weren’t many places to park near the Kino Bałtyk. As a city over nine hundred years old that had a number of historic buildings from different centuries surrounding its center, Rypin was not too willing to suffer the loss of history in order to accommodate a modern day parking lot or garage seen in the newer parts of larger Polish cities.

Apart from the inconvenience of parking, Pan Fortuna wanted his daughter to get the total experience of the Kino Bałtyk: the pre-show entertainment of the walk and plaza gathering, not just the movie itself. He wanted to share with Olenka a little of his own past and help her understand the people and town in which he was born and lived all his life. Pan Fortuna felt it was his responsibility to instill in his daughter not only a sense of what it was like to be a Pole but also a Rypiniak, for all Poles feel a special loyalty to the town or region of the country from which they hail. Pan Fortuna was proud of his little Rypin and he was a Rypiniak through and through.

Thus father, mother, and daughter walked through the winding streets near their home where there were other townhouses, one next to the other, just like theirs. Little Olenka walked between her parents, holding on to the hand of each. Like many children her age, she asked a hundred and one questions.

Will there be a lot of people? Will there be a lot of other children? Since the movie is American, will it be in English?

Of course, as in other non-English speaking countries, American movies that are played in Poland either have subtitles or actors doing voice-overs of the original actors. It wouldn’t have made much of a difference to Olenka if the movie wasn’t in Polish. She could understand and speak English like a native.

Mama, the snowflakes are staying in your hair, the girl said to her mother in English.

Guess what? I’m not the only one. Someone looks like a little snow fairy with all that decoration, replied Pani Fortuna to her daughter, who actually did resemble a little fairy with snow accentuating her long, wavy blonde hair that stuck out from underneath her fuzzy white hat.

Olenka, look at all the lights and the people in front of the Kino Baltyk, Pan Fortuna said to his daughter in Polish, trying to impose the native elements upon his child. It looks like a good part of Rypin is here to see the movie.

Olenka took it for granted that she spoke with her father in Polish and her mother in English. It seemed as natural to her as breathing.

After passing the bicycle shop on the traffic circle and crossing Warsaw Street, the Fortunas arrived at the plaza in front of the Kino Bałtyk. With the thick crowd not in any hurry to get inside the cinema despite the snow and cold, it seemed that Pan Fortuna was right in his assumption that a good number of Rypiniaks would be seeing the movie. It didn’t take long for him to meet with some acquaintances in the plaza.

Marek, I see that you decided to come out and enjoy this fine weather we’re having this evening, Pan Pilarczyk joked with Pan Fortuna. And of course you didn’t want to exclude Pani Fortuna and your dear little one from enjoying it with you.

Well, Tomasz, you can’t expect me to keep my two girls under lock and key all the time now, can you? Pan Fortuna smiled at his wife and daughter, squeezing Olenka’s hand as he did so.

As her father chatted a bit with the pharmacist, Olenka looked around her, taking in the scene. A number of other people like her father and now her mother were exchanging pleasantries and putting everyday business activities aside. Pani Statkiewicz, a friend and colleague of Pani Fortuna at the city’s high school where the two of them taught, came to say hello and talk about the upcoming Christmas holiday and the preparations they would need to make.

With all the exams I have to grade before the school break starts, I don’t know how I’m going to put the house in order and prepare all the dishes I have to make, agonized Pani Statkiewicz to her friend. Normally, Halina Statkiewicz’s mother prepared the recipes for the Christmas holiday which she hosted in her own home. Since her mother’s passing several months earlier, the holiday hosting now fell to Pani Statkiewicz as she was the eldest child and daughter.

At least you have your cousin to help you out. I’m glad that we’re spending Christmas Eve with Marek’s mother. That will give me a little break, but I still have to do the Christmas Day meal. If Marek is able to help me out with cleaning the house and doing some of the shopping, I’ll be in seventh heaven.

I’ll tell you what—why don’t we prepare some different dishes and exchange them with each other? That way we both won’t kill ourselves and we’ll have some variety on our holiday tables.

That would be wonderful, exclaimed a relieved Pani Fortuna. Let’s talk in school about the dishes we’re planning to prepare.

Such were the snippets of conversation to which a bored Olenka was witness. A small child subjected to what seemed to her to be the dull exchanges of the adult world is most likely to become fidgety, and Olenka was just about to reach that point when someone with straight dark brown hair and eyes to match waved to her from across the plaza.

Justyna!

It was her good friend and playmate with whom she often spent time in the playground trying to out-swing on the swings or out-climb on the jungle gym. Olenka was happy and grateful to finally find someone with whom she could talk.

Mama! Olenka pulled on her mother’s hand excitedly. Justyna’s here! Can I go talk with her?

Just for a moment. Your father is buying the tickets for the movie and the people are starting to go inside.

Olenka rushed over to her friend, who was also with her parents. It was apparent that Justyna was also glad to have a break from adult company for a short time.

Hi, Olenka!

Hi, Justyna! Good evening, Pan Krakowski and Pani Krakowska. Olenka’s parents had always taught her to be polite and respectful toward adults. She also knew, even at this tender age, that parents somehow communicated with each other by some quick and mysterious means when she wasn’t listening and that her behavior at this moment would be reported back to her parents.

Good evening, Olenka. Are you as excited as Justyna about seeing the movie? asked Pani Krakowska. I’m sure you won’t have any trouble understanding what they’re saying. Justyna, you should have Olenka teach you English. You should start speaking in English to each other.

All Pani Krakowska’s daughter could do was smile with some embarrassment. Both she and Olenka knew this scheme of her mother’s. Almost every time that Olenka went to her friend’s apartment she would hear the same remarks from Pani Krakowska who thought it was a status symbol to speak English in post-Communist Poland. For Olenka’s part, she was happy to speak some Polish for a change since she spoke mostly English at home.

Well, I just wanted to come over and say hello. My father just bought our tickets and my mother told me to come back soon.

Don’t forget to come over sometime next week to play with Justyna. I’m planning to make some gingerbread, and you and Justyna can talk in English together.

It was difficult to tell who was more relieved that Olenka had to return to her parents, Olenka or Justyna. Both girls were growing weary of Pani Krakowska’s pestering about practicing English.

When Olenka got back to her parents, they had by this time concluded their socializing (at least for now) and were ready to go inside the cinema. This was the moment for which Olenka was waiting. She already knew what happened outside the Kino Bałtyk. Now she was finally going to see what happened inside.

Along with the other moviegoers Olenka and her parents walked under the overhang of the front entrance, under the Kino Bałtyk sign and past the box office. Until she stepped inside the doors Olenka hadn’t noticed how chilled she was from the cold and snow outside. She was happy to be inside and warm up a little while she took in the sights around her.

By the standards of other cinemas the Kino Bałtyk was not the most large or sumptuous, but that did not matter to the little girl who was looking wide-eyed at everything for the first time. The red velvet chairs were slightly worn from decades of audiences sitting in them and the dark wooden floorboards creaked and groaned with the shifting weight of people walking across. The mushroom-colored walls were illuminated by lights in long simple sconces placed at strategic intervals, shedding a muted glow on people finding their seats in the balcony and below. At the front of the reasonably-sized auditorium was a stage raised some feet above the floor that was sometimes used for live theatre or music recitals should traveling performers stop in Rypin. A few feet behind the apron of the stage was a large white projection screen that was lifeless and unassuming at the moment.

In the eyes of the little girl, the auditorium of the Kino Bałtyk, which had seen the better for wear, was an enchanting, wondrous place filled with the chatter, shuffling, and energy of the people around her and the expectation of exciting things about to happen.

We’re lucky your father was able to get us good seats close to the screen, Pani Fortuna bent down to tell her daughter as they headed over to their seats. When I was a girl growing up in America, you didn’t have assigned seats in the cinema. You could sit anywhere you wanted.

But how did you know where to sit?

You just picked a seat depending on whether you wanted to sit close to the screen or farther away from it.

Weren’t there a lot of people? And wouldn’t that make it difficult for people to find places to sit?

There were quite a few people, but when you had eight or ten movies playing in different rooms in the same cinema, it wasn’t so crowded. Not as crowded as it is here with only one movie playing in one room.

Can we go to a cinema in America one day?

Perhaps, replied Pani Fortuna to her daughter.

Olenka was too excited about the cinema and the movie they were about to see to notice the shadow that had briefly swept across her mother’s face. Up to this point, the sheltered young girl had known nothing but happiness and unconditional love in her life.

Here we are, announced Pan Fortuna who led his family to their seats.

The seats Olenka’s father bought were indeed good. They were in the middle of the fourth row with an excellent view of the screen. The small family sat together just as they had walked together to the Kino Bałtyk with Olenka between her parents. It was fortunate for the small-sized girl that no one too tall sat in front of her which would have hampered her enjoyment of the movie.

I always loved watching Disney movies when I was a little girl, Alex, Pani Fortuna told Olenka.

Unlike most other people who used Olenka, the Polish nickname for Aleksandra, Pani Fortuna always addressed her daughter by her English nickname. Olenka was used to each person calling her something different. To her father she was moja mała, kochana, or simply Olenka. To her grandmother she was kotulek. It made Olenka feel special that each person had his or her own distinctive name for her.

At last the lights around the auditorium dimmed, and as they did, the chattering in the audience faded to silence. Olenka’s heart began to race as Pocahontas began. It was the first of many American movies she would see in the Kino Bałtyk that would help feed her insatiable fascination with her mother’s homeland.

The animals and forests of America (albeit in cartoon format) came to life and opened up to her on the cinema’s screen. What a wonderful place was America! A place that had forests with tall trees touching the sky, large waterfalls everywhere, talking willows, and playful raccoons. Olenka wondered whether she, like the English sailors in the movie, would one day go from Europe to America and see the land she had heard so much about, the country from which her mother came. Would she see the rolling hills and fields stretched out, the big cities and the small towns her mother described? Would she see a movie in an American cinema? These were some of the questions and thoughts which ran through the mind of the American-Polish girl in the dark of an Eastern European cinema on a cold, snowy night.

Chapter 1

The Amerykańka

A little more than a year went by since Olenka lost her mother near the end of her first year in high school. The memories surrounding her mother’s death had become a part of her: the smell of antiseptic in the hospital, the look on her father’s face when he told her of her mother’s passing, the long procession of people behind the casket as it was being carried through the cemetery.

Two days before she died, Pani Fortuna was admitted to the hospital after vomiting blood. Olenka had never seen her mother ill with anything worse than the flu and was scared to see her in such a state. As usual, Pani Fortuna smiled at her daughter and told her not to worry because she would be fine. Even lying in the small hospital bed with IVs inserted into her arms, she was comforting her little Alex, now a young woman, and insisting that she go to school the next day. She did not want Olenka wasting time with her and getting behind in schoolwork. Grudgingly, Olenka told her mother that she would attend her classes but would be by her side as soon as school was over for the day.

It was something