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By Root 12451 0

that was made in medieval times—the Sukiennice it is called in Polish, which I believe translated in English means the cloth-hall, where they would have a market in all types of cloths and fabrics. Then there is a clock tower there on the church of St. Mary’s, very high, and instead of bells they have actual live men who come out on a kind of balustrade, these men who come out and blow trumpets to announce the hour. It makes a very beautiful sound in the night. Kind of distant and sad, you know, like the trumpets in one of the suites for orchestra of Bach, that make me think always of very ancient times, and how mysterious is this thing of time. When I was a little girl I would lie in the dark of my room and listen to the sound of the horses’ feet on the street below—they did not have too many motorcars in Poland then—and when I would go off to sleep I would hear the men blow the trumpets on the clock tower, very sad and distant, and I would wonder about time—this mystery, you know. Or I would lie there and think about clocks. In the hallway there was a very old clock on a kind of stand that had belonged to my grandparents, and once I opened the back of it and looked into it while it was running and saw a whole lot of levers and wheels and jewels—I think they were mostly rubies—shining in the reflection from the sun. So at night lying there I would think of myself inside the clock—imagine anything so crazy from a child!—where I would just float around on a spring and watch the levers moving and the various wheels turning and see the rubies, red and bright and as big as my head. And I would go to sleep finally with this clock in my dreams.

“Oh, there are so many memories of Cracow, so many, I can’t begin to describe them! They were wonderful times, those years between those wars, even for Poland, which is a poor country and suffer from, you know, an inferiority complex. Nathan thinks I’m exaggerating about the good times we had—he makes so many jokes about Poland—but I tell him about my family and how we lived in a wonderful civilized way, the best kind of life you can imagine, really. ‘What did you do for fun on Sunday?’ he says to me. ‘Throw rotten potatoes at Jews?’ You see, all he can think of about Poland is how anti-Semitic it is being and make those jokes about it, which cause me to feel so bad. Because it is true, I mean it is famous that Poland has this strong anti-Semitism and that make me so terribly ashamed in many ways, like you, Stingo, when you have this misère over the colored people down in the South. But I told Nathan that yes, it is true, quite true about this bad history in Poland, but he must understood—vraiment, he must comprehend that not all Polish people was like that, there are good decent people like my family who... Oh, it is such an ugly thing to talk about. It makes me think sadly about Nathan, he is... obsessed, so I think I must change the subject...

“Yes, my family. My mother and father was both professors at the university, which is why almost all my memories have this connection with the university. It is one of the oldest universities in Europe, it was started far back in the fourteenth century. I didn’t know no other kind of life except being the daughter of teachers, and maybe that is why my memories of all those times are so gentle and civilized. Stingo, someday you must go to Poland and see it and write about it. It is so beautiful. And so sad. Imagine, those twenty years when I was growing up there was the only twenty years that Poland was ever free. I mean after centuries! I suppose that is why I used to hear my father say so often, ‘These are sunny times for Poland.’ Because everything was free for the first time, you see, in the universities and schools—you could study anything which you wished to study. And I suppose that is one of the reasons why people was able to enjoy life so much, studying and learning, and listening to music, and going away to the country on Sundays in the spring and summer. Sometime I have thought that I love music almost as much as life, really. We were