A boy’s perception of his bedridden father is manipulated by a grandmother’s vicious stories, revealing complex family dynamics.
By Romuald Roman
[From Zakopane Mon Amour, a Memoir coming in 2026]
Grandma Rita tells me about my father: I never called my father “dad,” not even in my thoughts. He was always “father” to me. A bad man who lived in our house and did so much harm to us that it would have been better if he didn’t exist at all, because he only made my mother cry, worried Grandma Rita, and kept us poor. He was a bad man, my father. Grandma Rita’s words left no doubt.
“You’re still a child, but you can see for yourself what kind of father you have. There’s nothing good in him, only evil. He’s different from the fathers of your friends, isn’t he? They work, bring home hard-earned money, buy toys for their children, buy dresses for their wives, save money for better apartments, maybe even for cars, but your father, what? What does he do all day? He lies in bed pretending to be sick, or even worse – he drinks alcohol. Because – and it makes me very sad to tell you this – your father is an alcoholic. Yes! An alcoholic! You just need to look in his trash bin – he drinks a bottle of wine every day. He drinks with lunch. He drinks with dinner. He can’t live without drinking. He can’t live without alcohol. Oh! Poor you, poor thing! To have such a father! And to drink so much, he needs money. Once he had money, I won’t tell you how he got it, because it’s obvious how – through human suffering or some kind of theft. God! My God! What a terrible man! But now that he has no money or gold, he sells things from the house. You can see it yourself, I don’t need to tell you; he takes down paintings from the walls, in his room, in your room – and sells them. Look at the display cabinet, there’s less and less porcelain in it because he’s sold most of the things. He sold them for vodka!”
Grandma was telling the truth. For several days, I would burst into tears whenever I remembered the morning experience of visiting my father in his room. I was looking at pictures of animals in the four-volume edition of Brehm’s Animal Life when some people came to him and asked if they could see our porcelain. He asked them to wait in the hallway, then got out of bed, put on his burgundy robe, and leaning on his cane, very politely showed them what he had to sell. Among piles of plates and saucers, dozens of glasses, colorful and blue cups, those that looked new and those that might have remembered Napoleon, there was a coffee set of – father once told me – “Vatican porcelain.” The cups were tiny, hand-painted and square in shape, and each one had a different scene from mythology painted on it. And I could, when I visited my father, bring him individual cups to his bed and ask:
“What’s in this picture?”
“Hector fighting Achilles.”
“And in this one?”
“The Trojan Horse.” “
And this poor man, chained to a rock?”
“That’s Prometheus.”
Father surely knew much more about each character, but he didn’t tell me much, just grumbled and brushed me off, muttering under his breath as if talking to me, an insistently curious youngster, was tiring him. I was standing with my nose against the glass of the display cabinet, the visitors above me, and father beside me. After a few minutes of haggling over the price, they began wrapping each cup, teapot, sugar bowl, and cream container in papers from old newspapers and carefully packing them into boxes.
And I burst into tears!
I had such an attack of crying, I screamed and howled so much, hugging the packed boxes, that the lady took out one cup and gave it to me to stop me from crying. She couldn’t bear my pain. She preferred to make the whole set incomplete rather than watch a child’s despair.
And father just watched. He didn’t back out of the sale. He needed money for vodka.
Grandma Rita was telling the truth.
She didn’t hide anything from me. She believed it was better for me to know the truth now as a child, than to wait for years until I grew up and discovered this truth myself. A child more easily gets used to the world around them, even if it’s bad, but if they grow up with this evil every day, it’s less painful than a sudden shock. That was Grandma Rita’s spiritual vaccine for children.
Once I told Grandma Rita:
“Father told me that before the war broke out, he was rich and had two cars, a Chevrolet for everyday use and an Austro-Daimler for special occasions. He showed me photos of him sitting behind the wheel. In those photos, he had a mustache. Is that true, Grandma?”
“What did he have?! He married a Jewish woman so he might have had something, but he probably drank it all away too.”
“But Grandma Lena said that Dad and she had a lot of money before the war, and that father and his previous wife jointly bought our house. So they probably pooled their money to buy it, not that she bought the house for him?” “As if! Like he would have anything of his own! He was as poor as a beggar when he came back from America! He had nothing!”
“But Grandma Lena said…”
“What did Grandma Lena say? She ‘lies like reading music notes.’ She had nothing herself when she fled from Sarajevo, so her son got nothing from her. She summoned him to return from America to save her because she fell into nervous madness after her husband was slashed with a razor by a butler. He probably had a good reason to slash him, otherwise he wouldn’t have done it! They’re all so good! So when it happened, the alarmed, obedient ‘sonny,’ instead of earning something in America, stupidly came back at her call. But he came back with nothing.”
“The butler sl-a-shed Grandma’s husband? How did he slash him? The husband who was a count?”
“What kind of count was he? Well, maybe he was, but a low-ranking one, insignificant, without money. A count – my child – is a Potocki or a Zamoyski, that I understand, that’s a count. But Dzieduszycki? What kind of count is that? When such a count dies, nothing remains except debts.”
“It’s a pity that father didn’t make a career in America.”
“That’s all we needed, for such mediocrity to make a career in America! And as an actor no less! To be an actor, you need to know English perfectly. And him! You take English lessons with Mrs. Mikulska in courses for children, right? You go to lessons every week. And, I bet, you probably already know the language better than he does, don’t you?”
“Not really, Grandma. Father reads books in English, thick ones.”
“What are you telling me?! Just because he turns the pages when you’re looking at him doesn’t mean he’s reading. He’s pretending. He’s lying to you, as with everything.”
“And about what happened during the war, is he lying too?”
“Of course! What kind of soldier was he! Young, skinny, and every bullet hit him. He spent the entire war pretending to be wounded. One lung shot through, and the other too, or maybe the same one shot through? (Hmm… That I actually believe, because his lungs wheeze disgustingly. Disgustingly.) And shrapnel hit him in the head, no wonder he has little brain left. What kind of soldier is that? Marshal Piłsudski, father’s hero, got no use out of him, only expenses for treatment.”
“So why did they give him those medals, Grandma? That blue cross that father is so proud of?”
“He probably stole it from someone wounded or dead and pinned it on himself. Don’t you know your father?” Father tells me about his life: ”What should I tell you about myself, son. You’re small, you won’t understand anything. Besides, that witch, your mother’s mother, has already turned you against me so much that whatever I tell you – you’ll only believe her.”
“Because she knows that you only love yourself and vodka, and you don’t love mom and me.”
“I love you too, but I’ve already lost both your mother and you.”
“If you loved me, you would give me that mechanical pencil with the white star that you keep in your drawer.”
“Have you gone crazy, son? That’s a genuine Mont Blanc!”
“So you won’t give it to me? Grandma Rita was right that you’re such a bad person.”
“Ah! Stop torturing me. I’m barely alive today because of this asthma. I’ll give you the pencil! Take it! Since you already know where it is in the desk drawer – take it and enjoy the pencil.”
And then I, not content with feeling victorious in the duel with my father-“monster,” needed a moment more to torment the man lying in bed who could do nothing to me, because I always managed to escape to the door. I stood safely by the half-open door and, leaving, threw in his direction:
“No matter what you give me, I still know that father is a drunk and a complete lazybones.”
Dare I admit such visits to father’s room gave me a lot of joy?
In Polish:
Babcia Rita opowiada mi ojcu
