Later in the evening, as Magda and Jacinta were washing up, the telephone rang.  Jacinta answered it.  “Zbigniew?...  Yes, all right, but Mumia is a bit busy at the moment.  She’s very upset.”

Magda seized the receiver and a few minutes later everything was sweetness and light.  “He says he will come home as soon as he can.”  Magda took a plate from the rack and dried it. 

I noted that my cousin had not fixed a definite date.

“I hope he apologised for hanging up on you,” said Jacinta. 

“Well… you know what young people are like,” Magda replied.

“Magda!”

“The greatest love is a mother's, then a dog's, then a sweetheart's.  I never thought I’d be able to have children.  He’s my miracle.”

I was put in mind of “Test Tube Babies”.  Surely not in Poland and in the 1950s?

“We made a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Jasna Gora,” Jacinta explained.

That sort of miracle!

The chores finished, we went outside with tea served with lemon in a glass, and a bottle of wodka.  We sat on canvas chairs on the small patch of lawn, in the midst of Magda’s extensive vegetable patch and beds of flowers which were now closing as dusk fell.  Magda talked about her childhood in Krakow before the war, her parents and brothers and sisters living in rented rooms while my grandfather worked at “Pan Kawka’s” bakery.  This was why I had come to Poland. 

“But Mum always said he had his own bakery business,” I interrupted.  In fact, she had told me he had several shops.

Magda laughed.  “Nie, nie!  Tato could never have afforded to buy a business!”

She reminisced about working in a factory after the war and living in lodgings in Krakow, so desperate to rent her own flat that she had married Zbigniew's father, and even joined the Communist Party… then allowed her membership to lapse as soon as they got one.  

“This pensionjat is ours.” Jacinta leant forward in her eagerness to tell me.  “We bought it together.”

I had thought nobody could own property in a Communist state, something else I had got wrong.  I drained the last drops of my wodka from my glass.  We never drank wodka at home.  Dad refused point blank to drink the Russian vodkas available in England, even when Sophie pointed out that the most prevalent brand was manufactured in Warrington, Lancashire.

“I thought we’d go to Krakow tomorrow,” said Magda, standing up and gathering up the glasses.  “Another day, we could see the Tatra Mountains and… I don’t know how you feel about this… we could visit the Auschwitz Museum.”

“Fine.” 

We were not going anywhere near Warsaw, Lodz or Lublin.

So the following morning we drove the little PolskiFiat north into the labyrinthine urban sprawl that was Krakow.  We stood outside the building where my mother and Magda had lived as children, but there wasn’t much to see, just blackened stone walls, tiny casement windows out of which washing hung precariously, and a dusty iron-barred gate leading into a smelly, darkened alleyway.  Magda said that this same gate had been there when she lived there and at the end of the alleyway was the door which had led up the stairs to their flat.  She told me about the window-seats on every landing which looked out into a rose garden and the grille with an awkward lock which all the children struggled to open at the top of the stairs.

I tried to see my mother in this place… and failed.  A blue and yellow tram hurtled past us, rattling along on its line in the road and a blowing hot oily slip-stream across our ankles.  Across the road, a woman in a stripy housecoat stood staring at us from outside a hairdressing salon, smoking a cigarette, taking it between her fingers and exhaling clouds of grey smoke, adding to the grime on the walls.  She was about my mother’s age.  “Why are the buildings in Krakow so black?” I asked. 

Magda pointed into the distance.  “Steelworks.  Nowa Huta.  I used to work there.  Zbigniew's father still does.”  She had never mentioned Zbigniew’s father in her letters. 

Magda wanted to show me the tourist sites: the main square, Rynek Glowny; Kasimierz, the Jewish Quarter; two art galleries; the castle on Wawel Hill; several churches, including the cathedral which had been Pope John Paul II’s until two years ago.  Even in the middle of the day, the churches were teeming with people, on their knees staring up at the altar, mumbling prayers and running their fingers over rosary beads.  Next day, we went to Zacopane, which is a skiing resort, and took vigorous walks in the mountains.  “It says in my guidebook that Lenin lived here during 1913-14,” I said.  “He drank coffee with intellectuals.”

Magda rolled her eyes.  “Sitting around in bars with his mates, with nice views of the mountains?  Hm.”

“He was interned at the start of World War I,” I read on, “then the intellectuals petitioned for him to be released.”

“Hm.  The Holy Father comes here to ski.”

“Even now?”

“Yes.  Why not?”

“What?  In his robes?”

“Of course he does, Marya!”

On the way back, we made a detour to Dad’s village, Malozianisz.  Magda didn’t know Malozianisz, and, as soon as we arrived, I realised why.  There was just a church, some boarded-up houses, long ears of grass growing through rusting farm equipment and two massive grain silos – empty but padlocked  We remained for just five minutes.

“People can't make a living off the land,” Magda explained.  “There’s no machinery and farm prices are fixed.”

“You said food prices had gone up.”

“The farmers won’t see any of it.”

Each morning, Magda would call out to the man sitting outside in his car.  “Off to the Wieliczka Salt Mines.  Coming?”

“You really shouldn’t banter with him,” said Jacinta when we returned home.

But next day she called out as usual.  “Auschwitz today.  You’d better tell them… whoever it is you report to.”  She turned to me as I climbed into the PolskiFiat beside her.  “Are you sure you want to go?”

“Yes.  How far is it?”

“About two hours.”

I settled down in my seat.  I enjoyed chatting in the car with Magda.  An hour passed.  Another half hour slipped by.  “Are you OK about going?” I asked her.

“Tak, tak.”

“Have you been before?”

“Six or seven times.  I went in 1947, when it was first opened as a museum.”

Fifteen minutes later, I saw a sign to Oswiecim, which is the Polish name for it, a normal green road sign with white writing.  You would have thought that they would have been more discreet.  Magda drove on.  Another one appeared, an ancient rusty, white thing… old enough to have been there forty years ago. 

They should have taken it down.

A few moments later… “Oswiecim 4,5km”.  Four and a half kilometres?  What was that in miles?

Then in black and white … “Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum this way.”  A bold arrow thrust itself down the road. 

“Why isn't that in Polish?”  It had taken me a full minute to realise that the words I had been reading were English.

“For the Americans.  Jews.”

“The Americans should learn Polish.”  I was feeling a bit queasy.  It must be reading all the road signs. 

“We’re nearly here now.”

“Oh.”  We were passing a row of drab, grey breeze-block buildings.  “Is that it?”

“Nie.  About another kilometre.”

Then I saw the railway track.  “Magda, stop, please stop!”

Her brakes screeched as she pulled up at the roadside.  I wrenched open the car door, nausea welling up into my throat, spittle oozing into my mouth.  With a seismic heave, I propelled the contents of my stomach on to the verge, my watering eyes fixed on the iron rails… so ordinary, ridged iron, with wooden sleepers....  I heaved up the rest of my gut. 

“You’ll feel better now.”  Magda handed me a tissue.

Wiping my face, I climbed back into the PolskiFiat.  “Let's go.”  I hadn't been travelsick since the age of ten.

“Sure?”

“Yes.” I supposed that my breath smelled but I didn’t know what to do about it.

Around the corner appeared this black watch-tower thing, a little hut on stilts.  “Stop, Magda.  Stop!”  I could feel the volcano rising within me again, but this time I could only wretch and spit.

Magda wrenched the car into reverse.  An hour later we were back in Krakow, sitting in a pavement café in Rynek Glowny and she was ordering coffee for herself and wodka for me.

“I'm so sorry.”  I had said this every few minutes for the past hour.

“After what happened to your mother… and our family… it’s quite understandable.”

“Did you feel like me when you went in 1947?”

“Every time I feel differently...grief, angry, frustration, guilt.  Some tourists appear to feel nothing.  You hear them saying, “Where are the gas chambers then?”  They are the ones who should apologise.” 

I knocked down my wodka almost in one.   “Mumia… when she came along that railway track… she couldn't turn back.”

Magda drained her coffee cup.  She said nothing.

“When I was little, Tata told me that during the war Mumia was in a prison called Auschwitz, not for being bad, but… for doing something brave.  The name of the place came to sound so ordinary, as if everybody’s mother went there.”

My last words were almost drowned out by the laughter of the young men at the next table.  They were having a heated discussion about Cracovia and Wisla Krakow, Zywiec beer bottles mounting up in front of them.  How dare they talk about football just thirty miles from… It?

“I didn’t made allowances for her,” I added.

Magda ordered more coffee and wodka.  “Your father said she was brave?  Yes, I suppose she was in a very Agnieszka sort of way.”

I had known my mother.  I guessed at what she meant.

“Agnieszka and I never really got along, Marya.  She was my parents’ favourite… pretty, talented, charming - and spoilt.  When the Nazis came, she carried on as if there was no war… dressing up in frocks, silk stockings, high heeled shoes and going out with boys.  She always had some crazy idea.  She was going to be a concert pianist, an artist, a dancer, a poet, a violinist, a nun.  Don’t all Catholic girls fantasise about being a nun at some point?  Her violin teacher, Pani Stein, was Jewish, and, of course, as soon as the war started we lost touch.

“In 1941, the Jews were taken from Kasimierz and into the Podgorze ghetto.  We saw them trudging along our road in a long grey procession, carrying enamel pans and dragging leather suitcases.  We felt powerless.  And dirty.  Then in 1942 and 1943 the Nazis went through the ghetto and took most of the Jews away… those they didn’t shoot in the streets.  We heard the gunshots.”  She pointed behind her.  “From over there.”

“One afternoon in June 1943, Agnieszka found Pani Stein hiding in the dark alleyway behind those iron gates… which you saw.  She came rushing upstairs, her high heels clattering up the stone steps and the iron grille creaking as she opened it, her eyes shining with excitement.  “Mumia, Tata!  Pani Stein can stay with us, can't she?”  And, without waiting for them to say Yes or No, she pushed herself and Pani Stein past all of us standing in the doorway and into the flat.  Next thing she was getting out her violin.  “Now, Pani can give me lessons all the time!” she cried.

“”No, no, Agnieszka,” said Tata.  “The Germans will hear.”

“”The Germans don’t come up here,” said Agnieszka.

“”The neighbours will hear you playing and report us.”

“”Our neighbours wouldn’t do that!”

“Fortunately, Pani Stein herself had enough sense not to play or allow Agnieszka to.  However, it took the Germans just two weeks to find her… and our family.  I wasn’t at home.  I had gone off chasing after a half-rumour that someone was selling potatoes by the Mariacki church…”  She pointed across Rynek Glowny.  “Over there.  I was on my way back - empty-handed - when a neighbour stopped me.  Thank God it was summer, because for three months I slept rough.  By September, I had drifted into the countryside, and I knew I had to find shelter somehow.  I came to this farm and watched over it for several days.  A woman was living there by herself with two little girls.  Eventually I plucked up courage to knock on her door and begged to be allowed to sleep in her barn in return for working on the farm.  Out of Christian pity, she took me into her farmhouse and we worked the farm together.  That woman was Jacinta.”

“O…h,” I said, in English. 

The young men at the neighbouring table had long since gone and now a family with two small children was trying to order lunch.  Beef?  No, no beef today.  Bacon?  No bacon.  They settled for eggs and cheese. .

Magda grabbed my hand.  “The war is a fact of Polish life, Marya.  It scars us all, even though the Germans went a long time ago.  But, as Zbigniew will tell you, we have to deal with the things that are happening now.”