Excerpt: Krystyna

Gwideon Novraski was born in the Lodz region of Poland on a Sunday in the summer of 1921, just as the country was trying to recover from the war with Russia, and perhaps because of this, as he got older, Gwideon always looked to the East and thought of past struggles. He had no concept any different kind of life, except the one of hardship and struggle. His Father had fought in the Great War, and one Uncle who had fought against the Allies, those who died, and his aunts who were widows. He had three cousins who moved to the Ukraine, forgetting their socialist background in Poland to live with the Nationalists there; they said it was a much more liberal way of life, and that if you wanted to work under the nationalist regime, you could always find something to do, there would be no more poverty when one is a nationalist. Gwideon believed that they must have got it right, because they always sent over letters saying there was plenty of fresh fruit and meat, when the rest of Europe was in the depths of depression.
‘Socialism is the old way of life, and it should die,’ his father would say, before adding, just in case anyone thought he was hankering for the olden days. ‘If this crisis goes on for much longer, they’ll be bringing back old peasantry ways of life.’ You got the impression he was half-joking, but also half-fearful of it actually happening.
‘It seems that the answer is to be National and proud,’ he would state, while smoking on his pipe.
‘That brings all sorts of trouble in its own way, you mark my words,’ his mother said.
The smell of cooking was wafting through the house; freshly baked bread. It was always bread. Bread and tea was their staple diet, and sometimes, when they could afford it, a chicken which the next farmer would sell them, and Mother would make into broth. And they’d have the broth with bread and tea.
‘It wasn’t always like this,’ she would tell him, and to anyone who was listening. Mother didn’t come from peasant stock, but she wasn’t aristocracy either. Way back, her ancestors had come from Vienna, and her great, great grand-parents had owned land there, before they’d gone bankrupt, and forced to sell. They came to Poland on the premise they were making a new start, as Poland was going to be the next up and coming country. The year had been 1795, and since then, nothing had got much better for the Barjlenko family. The name died out when Mother got married as had been the only one left; her two brothers had served and died in the Great War.