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Post by kaima on Dec 12, 2006 2:06:24 GMT -7
My Father's Gift
December 24th, 2000: “The English couple in Row 30 wants some tea.”
“Okay, I’ll take care of them.”
Janet Pierce and Donna Stapleton moved smoothly around each other in the forward galley of the 747. Lunch had been served and cleared away, and most of the passengers on the Christmas Eve afternoon flight from Brussels to New York were dozing, reading, or watching a movie.
The flight attendants, friends since meeting during their airline training two years ago, now shared an apartment on New York’s West Side but sometimes didn’t see each other for weeks. Because seniority determines flight assignments and vacations, both women knew they would be working the holidays, so they had bid for the same December schedule.
Janet delivered the English couple’s tea. On her way back up the aisle, she noticed in Row 22 an old man sitting alone, looking out the window, lost in thought.
Janet continued up the aisle, then glanced back again before stepping into the galley.
“Donna,” Janet said, her voice low, “did you notice the man in 22A?”
Donna leaned out of the galley and counted rows. “White hair, white moustache, expensive suit? What about him?”
“Well, he can’t be flying because of work—he’s too old,” Janet said. “And he doesn’t act like someone on vacation, either. There’s something more, something else—you can see it in his face.”
“Then why don’t you walk back there and tell him you’re so curious that you’ve just got to know why he’s on this flight?”
Janet pulled out a small tray, put some creams and sugars on it, and picked up the coffee pot. “Maybe he’d like some more coffee.”
“Same thing,” Donna said. “See you in an hour.”
Janet filled three other cups on her way back to Row 22. The cup in front of the old man was empty.
“Would you care for more coffee, sir?”
He was still gazing out the window and hesitated be- fore releasing his thought; then he turned to her. “Pardon?”
“Would you like another cup of coffee?”
“Yes,” he said, “that would be nice. Thank you.”
His words, slightly accented, were in the rhythm of another language. Janet held out the small tray, and he put his cup on it. “Were you visiting in Brussels?”
“No,” he said, “I own a small piece of land on the coast of Belgium, and there is one spot, beneath an old tree, that looks out over the water. Every year, at this time, I go there.”
“I hope you’ll be celebrating Christmas with family.”
“Yes. Tonight there will be five generations at one table.”
His accent was almost Russian, she thought, but gentler, and she noticed that in each letter t there was the hint of a d.
She filled his cup. “And the children can’t wait for tomorrow, I’m sure.”
“They are excited,” he said, “but they’ll open their pres- ents tonight, on Christmas Eve, after the big dinner.” He took his coffee off the tray. “That is the Polish tradition.”
“Is that where you’re from? Poland?”
“Yes, from Nizkowice, in eastern Poland. Well, now it is. When I was born, the town was part of Russia. It belonged to Poland again when I left.”
“When was that?”
“In 1920.”
Janet had already placed his age at about 80. “You must have been just a baby.”
“No,” he said, “I was 14.”
Janet mentally did the addition; she failed to hide her surprise.
“Yes,” he nodded. “I’m 94.”
“And you’re ...” she looked at the empty seats next to him.
“Traveling alone? I am. My body’s slower, but not my mind; not yet.”
“Did you leave Poland to come to the U.S.?”
“Back then, we called it ‘America,’ but yes, we did.”
“We?”
“My father and I.”
“How long did it take?”
“Three and a half months.”
“I didn’t know it took that long to cross the ocean.”
“The ship only took two weeks. It took us three months to walk across Europe.”
“You ...” Janet faltered, “you walked across Europe?”
“We didn’t have enough money for the railroad; we had no choice. Then there was the ship across the English Channel, and another from Liverpool to New York City.”
“To Ellis Island?” she asked.
“Yes. Past the Statue of Liberty.”
A passenger three rows back held up an empty coffee cup.
“Excuse me,” Janet said, tilting her head toward the other passenger, “but may I come back and talk to you?”
“Yes,” he smiled, “I would like that.”
Janet filled the other passenger’s cup then returned the tray and coffee pot to the galley. Donna looked at her. “He didn’t have a story to tell?”
“Would you cover for me for a while?”
Donna grinned. “Sure.”
Janet returned to Row 22 and sat down. The old man was looking at what seemed to be a watch; then he handed it to her. There were no numbers on its face, just four letters, and instead of hands, a slender, metal arm wobbled but stayed on true north. She suddenly realized its significance.
“Turn it over,” he said.
Carefully scratched into the bottom were “Jan Glodek,” “Józef Glodek,” and “1920.”
“I am Józef Glodek,” he said as he took back the compass and studied it. “This is what we followed, and I’ve kept it with me for 80 years.”
“How far did you walk?”
“More than 1,000 miles, but I don’t know for sure. You can’t walk a straight line like you can fly one. You take any road you can find and just try to keep going west. But there are at least 2,000 steps to a mile, and 1,000 miles means 2 million steps.”
“Why did you leave Poland?” she asked.
“No one in Nizkowice understood why we were leaving. ‘Poland is finally free,’ they said. ‘We have our country back.’ And they were right. For the first time in more than 120 years, there was a Poland again. Russia, Germany, and Austria, together, had conquered Poland and partitioned it in 1795, each taking the closest piece, but The Great War—World War I—gave us back our country. Then the Russians invaded us again, and it took another two years to push them out.
“The Battle of Warsaw, in August 1920, was the turning point. When the Russians began their retreat, we knew we were going to be free, and my father came home.”
“But then the two of you left,” Janet said.
“I didn’t want to. I was only a boy, and I heard what everyone was saying. But my father disagreed. ‘It’s not over,’ he said. ‘It will happen again.’ He understood that we were living on the battleground of Europe. If a Western European country wanted to invade Russia, it had to go across Poland, and whenever Russia wanted to attack Europe, it had to cross Poland. You can’t have families and farms on a battlefield.
“Most of Poland is flat, open country, easy for troops to march through. We were not like Switzerland, safe behind her mountains. I remember my father saying: ‘We are a great country with great people, but we are in the wrong place.’
“In The Great War, when the Polish men were conscripted, my father was forced to fight for the Russians. He said it was almost embarrassing, they were so disorganized and ill-equipped. They didn’t even have enough guns and ammunition. And during battles, when they radioed their troop movements, they didn’t even put them into code.
“It wasn’t long before my father’s battalion was surrounded and captured by the Germans, who shot the Russians then sent all the Polish soldiers to fight on the Western Front.
“For three years, my father fought and dug trenches for the Germans at Verdun, the Somme, and Passchendaele, until the fall of 1918, when they were retreating. He wondered if the Germans would decide to get rid of the Poles like they’d gotten rid of the Russians, so one night he crawled 300 yards across the no-man’s land between the two trenches and surrendered to an American company.
“After the Armistice, other men came home with things they’d stolen or taken from the dead. My father came home with something more valuable—a piece of paper with the name and address of an American soldier.
“To get into America, if you had no money, someone had to sponsor you, to vouch that you would not need the government’s support. My father and the soldier, Thomas Stafford, exchanged several letters, discussing how they would open a series of bakeries in New York. Then Poland’s fight against Russia began, and my father went off to war again.
“By the time he came back, in September 1920, my mother had died in the flu epidemic, and there was a letter waiting for him, from the American. Stafford had written because the door to America was going to close. Immigration quotas would be adopted in 1921. My father found a ship’s schedule, picked an arrival date, and sent a last letter to Stafford. In five days, we sold what we had and walked out of Nizkowice.
“Physically, my father wasn’t well. How could he be, after six years of war? He wasn’t a big man—just my size—and his lungs had been burned by phosgene gas. One day, when the Germans fired gas shells toward enemy trenches, the wind turned around and blew it back at them. There were no gas masks for the Poles.”
“When your father came home, he must have seemed like a stranger to you,” Janet said.
“He was. I was 8 years old when the Russians took him. When he returned for good, I was 14, and because of him, because of this stranger, I was leaving everything I knew. I didn’t want to go, but I had no choice. He was my father. I did what I was told.
“During that first day of walking, I kept hoping he’d change his mind, turn around, and go home. I watched him, and he never looked back, not once. At the end of that first day, I was farther from Nizkowice than I’d ever been before.
“We carried almost nothing—we’d sold everything to have enough money for the boat tickets. Along with a few days’ food, we only had two blankets, a pair of maps that were often wrong, the compass, and a calendar. At the end of each day, we’d find a place to sleep, in the corner of a field or beneath a tree, and my father would pull out the calendar and cross off another day. Then he would flip to the last page and stare at December 24th—the day we’d arrive in America.
“During the first week of walking, it was awkward between us. My father said almost nothing. He wasn’t unfriendly, but he was remote. He wasn’t used to having a son, as I wasn’t used to having a father. He began to ask me questions, to find out who I was. And I think I surprised him, for I’d read a lot.”
Glodek looked at Janet. “You probably don’t know much about Poland, do you?” She shook her head. “Well, we aren’t like Russia. We weren’t a nation of illiterate serfs. Back when the Roman Catholic priests came north, they taught us to read while they were teaching us religion.
“I walked behind my father, and I remember the day that he said to come forward and walk next to him. Of course, I wanted to hear about my family, so he told me about my mother and how he’d met her, this pretty girl from the next town, and how amazed he was that she would marry him, a baker from Nizkowice. And he told me about my grandfather, also a baker, ‘who couldn’t make a loaf without a lecture,’ always talking to my father about God, family, honor, and country. My father said that he knew every speech by heart, but he never minded hearing them, for my grandfather believed every word. And as my father grew up, the words in his head gradually made more sense.
“We walked northwest, to Warsaw. I couldn’t believe that such a place even existed. Such big buildings, and so many people! We followed the Vistula River out of Warsaw, but when it turned north, we continued west, across Poland. We passed battlefields, forests that had been shelled into oblivion, and thousands of graves. I remember one farmer complaining to us that every time he tried to work his field, he just kept plowing up bones.
“It was mid-October when we reached Germany, and colder now. We went south of Berlin, through Leipzig, Kassel, and Köln, and the walking was getting harder on my father. He was coughing a lot, but we didn’t stop. He showed me on the maps where he’d fought and where he’d endured the winters. He told me about the years in the trenches, about the mud and barbed-wire, and always sleeping with his coat over his head because of the rats.
“The Western Front ran from the North Sea to the Alps—475 miles—and thou- sands of miles of trenches were dug on both sides as the armies pushed forward and were driven back. The farther west we walked, the more trenches we found— still held in place by sandbags. My father explained that every front-line trench was 7 feet deep so that a soldier could walk standing up without getting hit by snipers.
“He told me how, one time, he was talking with three other soldiers and, after he walked away, a shell fell where he’d been standing, blowing those men apart. And of Christmas presents arriving for soldiers who’d already died, so the gifts were opened and shared by the living.
“But in the midst of all the misery, there was hope. On December 24th, on both the Eastern and Western fronts, one side would start singing Christmas carols, and the other side would often join in. Eventually, a local truce would be called and these mud-covered men would climb out of the trenches and walk into no-man’s land to sing and drink and exchange souvenirs. That gave the enemy a face, and he turned out to be just another tired soldier who wanted to go home. Sometimes it took the officers eight or nine days to get their troops to start shooting again.
“I began to understand where my father had been and what he’d done. This quiet baker from Nizkowice, not yet 37 years old, had fought in two wars for three different armies, and he’d killed and nearly been killed. And now, every day he was walking from sunrise to sunset to make sure that I wouldn’t repeat his life.
“He told me what he’d heard and read about America. ‘If you own a piece of land, no one can take it away from you,’ he said. ‘And if you have an idea, a good idea, you can grow rich.’
“And he talked about the holidays, the family that I’d have, what Christmas Eve would be like, the presents and the dinner, and how there must always be an extra plate at the table for someone who needed a meal—as we needed a meal right then.”
“How did you survive on the walk? What did you do for food?” Janet asked.
“Out in the country, there were always fish in the rivers. And in the towns, we would follow our noses to the bakeries, and they often gave us yesterday’s bread. Or we would exchange a half-day’s labor for a few fresh loaves. At first, my father introduced me as ‘Józef,’ then, later, simply as ‘my son,’ and I liked hearing him say it.
“My body got used to the walking— at 14, you can get used to anything. But my father wasn’t breathing well. He had to walk slower and rest more often, but he never complained and he would not stop. His coughing was nearly constant. I carried the compass and the maps and the blankets, and he followed me.
“From Köln, we went into Belgium, and it was less than 80 miles to the coast, but now he could only go a few miles a day, even if I was helping him.
“It was the evening of December 8th when we first saw the water, and I remem- ber my father’s smile—it was like he could breathe again. We were still in the country- side, and he sat down, leaned back against a tree, looked out at the sea, and smiled.
“‘We did it,’ he said. ‘We made it.’
“‘From now on, the ships will do all the traveling,’ I told him. ‘No more walking.’
“‘No,’ he agreed, ‘no more walking.’
“We slept there that night, but the next morning he couldn’t stand up. The coughing and the sound of his breathing were terrible. I think I knew then. We sat under that tree as his breathing got worse, and his face was almost blue from the lack of oxygen. In the evening, he said he wanted a promise from me.
“‘Anything,’ I told him.
“‘I want you to promise that you won’t go back.’ And I gave him my promise. A few hours later, he died.” Józef Glodek stopped and looked out the airplane window. He cleared his throat once, then a second time, and Janet put a hand on his right arm. He gave a half-nod and said, “I buried him there, with my own hands, and the next day I kept my promise. I took the ship to Liverpool.
“It wasn’t until three days later, when I was on the steamship heading for New York, that I realized I might not get into America. Thomas Stafford would be at Ellis Island on December 24th, but he would not be looking for a 14-year-old boy tra- veling alone. He would be looking for his friend, Jan Glodek, and Jan’s son. Thomas Stafford would not know me. And if you did not have a sponsor, you could be put back on the boat to Europe. I wondered how far it was from Ellis Island to the land, because I knew how to swim. Then I realized what a different thought that was for me. I was still 14, but I wasn’t a boy anymore; you can’t be after you’ve walked across Europe and buried your father.
“There were thousands of us onboard that ship and so many languages that I’d never heard before. No storms came up, but the crossing was hard for me. I kept thinking that my father should have been there, for this was his dream, and he’d deserved a new start, a second try at life.
“The ship arrived one day early, on December 23rd, and I remember our coming into harbor. The passengers were all standing on deck, but there wasn’t any cheering or yelling. It was quiet. I think we were afraid because we’d come so far and still might not get in.
“We got off the ship and were put onto ferries that took us out to Ellis Island. The food was good, better than anything I’d had in four months. The men were separated from the women, and everyone was given a health inspection to make sure that we weren’t bringing any diseases into the country.
“I looked at the thousands of people who were there, waiting to be met, and I was sure I would be sent back. On Christmas Eve, 80 years ago today, I was sitting on a bench in the Great Hall when one of the interpreters and another man came up to me. The interpreter knew I was Polish, for we’d spoken before.
“‘Are you Józef Glodek?’ he asked.
“‘Yes,’ I said.
“The interpreter nodded and stepped back. The other man came forward and put out his hand to me.
“‘I’m Thomas Stafford,’ he said.
“I was dumbfounded. I didn’t know how this had happened. ‘How did you find me?’ I asked in Polish. My question was interpreted, and I still remember Stafford’s face as he searched for the right words. Then he said one sentence to the interpreter, who turned to me, and said, ‘In your father’s last letter, in September, he said you’d be arriving alone.’”
Frederick Waterman’s stories are available in a book and on audio from Canfield & Mackenzie, Publishers, at row22.com.
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