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The Lenski File


Lillian Boraks- Nemetz
Vancouver

The Lenski File is a fictitious novel based on certain facts. My character Slava(whose Canadian name is Elizabeth) resembles me up to a point. Slava is now almost 19. She has always felt that there was much unfinished business for her family in Poland. One night in Canada while still at home, she finds a file of her father's, a once lawyer who died recently. She discovers certain documents. She had always hoped to go back to Poland to find her sister who was supposed to have died there but the family never had proof. She had always felt guilty to have survived while her sister vanished. Slava has been invited to London, England. When the chapter begins she is at her aristocratic friend's home in London, in the Blue Room, examining her father's file which she hastily threw into her suitcase, without having had read it first.

An Excerpt From Chapter 5, called FATE

"There are also three documents that attested to my father's ownership of several properties, including an apartment building in Warsaw, and the Rose Villa in Malinow. Property lost to us, stolen by Mortynski. Property that could have made a big difference in our lives: to think that we would not have had to struggle so hard as immigrants if we had our property. Maybe Papa wouldn’t have had to work so hard at the deli, and gotten sick. Maybe we could have owned a home, like most Canadians.

And the man who stole it, Mortynski, goes unpunished. He remains the false owner of what today could well have been ours. One hope remains: he didn't get the Rose Villa, which is still in my grandfather's name. Only now it probably belongs to the Communist government of Poland.
I stare at the proof of my inheritance, and see only worn sheets of paper, held together by rusted staples.

I flip through several more pages of the file, and, at the very end, I find Papa's drawing of lilies-of-the-valley, and his poem below it. The lilies are perfectly drawn. Little bells on pale green stems nestling inside the gentle leaves. I can almost smell them, they are so real. The poem brings back bittersweet memories. I translate it into English:

For my two daughters, Slava and Basia

LILIES OF THE VALLEY
Lilies of the valley, fragrant bells
Infant faces on lithe stems
Subtle miniatures, shimmering like stars
Like the innocent eyes of little girls
Gorgeous white bonnets over green capes
Lifting their heads towards warmth, towards the sun
Sisterly souls, golden sunbeams
You strain your arms towards your absent parents
Flutter white bells, ring out wistful and tender
While the wind bends your heads and clouds hide the sun
But wait! When the wind dies and the sun awakens
I will gather you into a bouquet once again
And hold you close to my heart.
Papa

Written by Stefan Lenski on Christmas Day, 1943 while in hiding from the Nazis in a Polish village, separated from his two young daughters, who were in hiding elsewhere.

The contents of this file enter my being. I am back there again. The little girl whose body would freeze up so often against the frosty wall of ice and snow outside the window of our house. Against the nightmarish wall of the Warsaw Ghetto. Against the wall of tears of abandoned children, crying for their Mama and Papa.
The past returns, wearing a ghost-mask.
It’s two-sided. On one side is Slava, the helpless little girl in hiding, praying for the safety of her sister and parents. On the other is Elizabeth, the Canadian teenager making her way in the world. Up till now I had almost thought that Slava had disappeared for good. Instead she has returned, forcing me to go back there again. Once again I feel like two people, two links on a chain of life, one here, another there, connected only by the string of memory, knotted into a file and a few black and white photographs.
The question remains: will I ever find Basia and get the Rose Villa back? Must I take on responsibility for my father's unfinished business? If not I, the eldest child, then who?
I wish Papa were here to tell me what to do. Instead he just smiles at me from a photograph on the desk.
The maid announces that tea will be served in the library in five minutes. I try to pull myself together."

 


See http://texturespublishing.com/Boraks-Nemetz/ for further information on Ms. Nemetz’s books.