THE ROAD THROUGH THE FORBIDDEN

CHAPTER VII (UNEXPECTED SUPPORT)

August, 1989

Tomasz learned of his aunt's death from Janusz, her lawyer and last lover, and officially her cohabitant. It was an extremely crucial year for Poland. Communism had died for good and Tomasz was glad that his aunt had still managed to live to see this moment. Irena was well advanced in years, so her death came as no surprise to anyone. Nor was anyone surprised by the fact that she had prepared for her departure, as usual, with the utmost care. An urn for ashes and a place in the cemetery prepared. The last will written down. She also did not fail to take care of the content of the obituary, which Janusz had already sent to the Wyborcza newspaper. Tomasz thus had practically nothing to do. All he had to do was show up at the funeral, which, in secular convention, his aunt had also organised in advance. She had even chosen the music, which was to be played on the saxophone just after Janusz's speech. It was not a sad piece of music. It suited his aunt and the whole situation because, as per her wish, his aunt died in autumn. The piece Autumn Leaves by her beloved Chet Baker was the icing on this painfully pedantic cake.

What was Aunt Irena like? Certainly lordly, but that suited her, and straightforward, always elegantly dressed and aloof from everyone. Tomasz could not recall ever sitting on his aunt's lap. He never lamented a bruised knee, never burst into tears over trivialities. His aunt liked children who were more mature than their peers. She had none of her own. She talked to Tomasz as if he were an adult. He appreciated this, because he also disapproved of all the goo-goo and num-num in fresh-faced parents, which made him nauseous and did not see himself as a parent.

For as long as he could remember, he and his aunt had both respected each other and both had warm feelings for the same woman - Tomasz's mum. Sometimes he wondered how it was possible for full sisters to be so different. During their childhood, they stayed mostly in the countryside, where they climbed trees, went to the orchard leased by a neighbour, and told each other scary stories in the evenings, unable to fall asleep. They enjoyed spending time with each other. Their contact loosened after university, only to almost completely disappear after the two sisters married. Unfortunately, both women, as came to light only after some time, had not been at their best when it came to choosing husbands. Everyone knew about his mother's bad choice. His father was a drunkard, womaniser and degenerate. He lost contact with him in the middle of primary school. Irena's choice of her life partner had always been praised by everyone. Her husband had a degree in law, was rich and worked as a diplomat in communist Poland. He spent a lot of time in Leipzig, where, on Wächterstraße 32, he indulged in, as it turned out later, intoxicating moments with his many lovers.

Tomasz's mother never liked him. Irena was not indebted to her, judging her sister's choice with worse epithets than those used by Tomasz's mother. Their encounters were increasingly reduced to nothing more than family gatherings, in a nervous atmosphere, so Tomasz never had the best memories of Christmas. Everything changed at a memorable Christmas Eve dinner, at which, as usual, Irena's husband was not present. It was also the first Christmas without Tomasz's father, with whom his mother had definitively separated. It was then that she decided to reconcile with her sister. So she started with a story when she met her husband's female secretary a few days ago, who spoke in only superlatives about him. And she apologised to her sister saying that she had misjudged him. And that's when the dam broke. Aunt Irena, always composed and confident, suddenly burst into tears. Tomasz's mother quickly took the boy into the other room. He never learnt his aunt's tale or her story, but from what he was able to deduce over the following years, it was clear that Irena's husband had abused her mentally and physically practically since their marriage. It seemed incomprehensible to him how such a woman had allowed him to treat her this way for so many years. Unfortunately, he did not have time to ask her about it.