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More About My Friends and Activities in Form 6 CHAPTER 5 For some time in Form 6 I shared a desk with Lyovka Vasserman, a tall, hefty and clumsy fellow. He was a poor student and I was ordered by the teachers "to look after him". I was supposed to keep him from talking during lessons and from fidgeting in his place. I remember that I even hit him sometimes on his back and on his hands for the purpose of his "re-education". He was big and strong, but he never ever hit me back. And then one moment I felt very ashamed for hitting him so arbitrarily. I looked at myself from aside and realized the whole ugliness of my behavior. I felt as if my cheeks were burning with shame. I came to school the next day and told Vasserman that I will never ever raise my hand at him. I never did and not only at him but at any other boy either. Since then I could never watch quietly other girls hitting boys, even as a joke. Vasserman, by the way, did not make much fuss about my change of behavior and did not even realize that it signified a major change in my attitude towards those surrounding me. Same as I once felt ashamed because of my fights with Zyama, I now felt badly because of my ugly and dishonorable attitude to my comrade. What right did I have to hit him? How ugly it looked. I remembered that feeling for a long time. I went to school with Lyova Vasserman for another two years and I have also met him after he left our school. In the summer of 1932 we were living in Jaundubulti, where the Vassermans' had a shop. They had a mare there. So, at 6 o'clock in the morning "Vas'ka", as we called Lyova Vasserman, brought his mare to our summer house and I went riding. It only happened three or four times, but I do remember it because these were my only attempts of learning to ride. I never did it again… Lyova died during the German occupation. Fima Liven was also one of the boys who moved somewhere around me for a long time. In primary school he was one of the "little boys", but in the second year of high-school he started smoking, wore a real suit and turned into a "grown-up". Fima and I finished high-school together. During our final year we quarreled because he tore off the wall a revolutionary leaflet and I slapped him in the face for this. When during the war Fima was seriously wounded and one of his legs was amputated, he wrote to me, saying: "I hope I have now expiated my guilt." From time to time I see Fima Liven now too. He is a bookbinder. He drives his white "Zaporozhetz" (a Soviet-made car), which received from the state for free as a war invalid. He is now a grandfather: both his son and his daughter have little girls. I look at Fima and remember him as a boy who was very good at translating Moliere into Yiddish. It is a pity that he could not continue his education. He is happy with his life though. Fridlender's Studio
When he came up to me in the studio when I was drawing, my heart missed a beat because I knew that he will say something important and right away my drawing will improve. I remember one day I was painting a plaster-of-Paris model of a large leaf, an orange and a vase, all of them again the background of a piece of dark-blue velvet. While I was doing the plaster leaf with my pastel crayons, Fridlender said: "If you look more carefully, you will find all the right colors; there is a blue there, a red and a greenish one too." I looked at it again, found these colors and the plaster leaf acquired a new depth and turned alive on paper. I loved using pastel crayons. Mother had two of my pastel paintings framed: that orange with the plaster-of-Paris leaf and the vase and also the painting of a stuffed bird. I found both of them when I came back to Riga after the war. Only my poor bird had survived until now. There is a date pencilled in under it: XII 1928. I am including it here although 43 years is a long time… This is a photograph of my bird. I hope it will go on living for more than its 43 years! During of those days when I went to the studio, I started my first diary. I wrote in Yiddish, even though I had just started getting used to it. I started writing because of a happy feeling: I had just won a wager against Mr. Fridlender. I do not remember what the wager was about, but I do remember that Mr. Fridlender's glasses were supposed to be the prize. A short time before the wager I had been told that I had to wear glasses; it turned out that I was short-sighted. After I won the wager Mr. Fridlender was ready to give me his glasses, but I graciously refused to take them, having stated: "You can have them back as my present!" Thus, my diary started as follows: "An interesting event took place today: I gave Mr. Fridlender his glasses back as a present". I described what had happened. I was slightly over 13 when I started that diary and it contained the description of another happy day in my life. I remember that day well and I shall try to describe it now. My Very Happy Day We had a boy in class whose surname was Medalye. He had lively dark eyes, thick lips and a funny turned-up nose. He was one of the "older" boys, he often went to the skating rink. One day Medalye broke his leg. We considered it our duty to come and visit him, so a group of 8 or 10 of us gathered daily and went to his place. He lived on Avotu St., quite far from me, but I came to visit him, together with the others, quite often. We brought him his homework, explained things to him, but the main thing was to be together, to have fun, to laugh. Thus, one quiet winter day a rather large group of us gathered at Medalye's place and when we left his place it was already evening time. We all came down into the yard near his house. It was snowing and everything around us was covered with white snow. The air was bluish but it was not cold. One of the boys threw a snowball and another one threw one back. Suddenly a snowball fight started in the yard, with the boys fighting against the girls. Everyone kept throwing snowballs, everyone laughed, but little by little the girls started backing away. Yet I did not! I threw myself into the fight with renewed energy, made new snowballs and kept throwing them at the boys. I moved forward and the girls, who seemed to have acquired a new fighting spirit, followed me. I kept throwing ball after ball, not thinking of anything else, and suddenly I was seized by a special felling of total happiness. It just filled all of my heart and I felt indescribably happy, free and joyful. I felt I could do anything I wished, I was not afraid of anything and I was so happy that I wanted only one thing: that this evening should go on forever. In the end the boys retreated. Hurray! Victory! And all this happened because I went into attack with such energy! The snow kept falling and it grew dark. We finally all went home… I was so happy that as soon as I came home I sat down and described that evening. I called it "my happy day". I do not remember if there was ever another day filled with such joy and such happiness as that day when I was 13 and a half years' old. What made me so happy? Was it because I felt so strong and courageous? Or was it because I thought that others saw me like that? Or was it just this wonderful white-bluish evening? Or was it so great to be together with everyone there? Does it really matter? What I still remember is the feeling of complete all-encompassing happiness that had no particular cause. I still love snowy evenings… Needlework on Saturdays
I spent several hours at Frau Roekke's. She usually
offered me breakfast and then we did all kinds of needlework. Her
daughter Irena sometimes joined us. What did I learn there? To start
sewing without a knot, to use a thimble, to wind threads accurately
and to make a woolen ball that has two 'holes', on the top and on
the bottom. I learned to embroider flowers with a knot in the middle.
(In 1951 I made a dress for little Tusya and embroidered it with
this kind of flowers.)
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As Mother had promised, I started attending the drawing
studio. The studio was affiliated with our high-school, but younger
students were also accepted as an exception. The painter who ran
it, Mr. Fridlender, accepted me too (when I started my lessons there
I was 13 and I attended them for 2 years). He also taught us drawing
when I attended Form 6. When I attended the drawing studio I forgot
about everything else. I equally loved to draw cubes and pyramids,
still lives and stuffed animals. Fridlender was a wonderful teacher
and a well known graphic artist.
This was one more occupation after school in Form
6. On Saturdays I took the No. 10 tram and went far away, across
the Daugava River, almost out of town, to visit Frau Roekke. Frau
Roekke did needlework, while her sister, Freulein Eckshtein, a nice
gray-haired and blue-eyed woman, used to come to our house for years,
doing all sorts of alterations, making bed linen and even making
new clothes for us, the younger children. Mother decided that it
would be a good thing for me to learn needlework and she arranged
that I should go to Frau Roekke on Saturday mornings. We did not
have classes in our Jewish school on Saturdays and it was a free
day. We did our homework on Sundays.
