The Roof Repair

— Junia Ancaya

After WW II, while Poland was under the vicious heel of Communism, my parents and I spent fifteen years of exile in Argentina. This is one of the anecdotes of that time.

In 1954, I was eighteen and finishing my senior year in a public high school one hour away from home by a combination of electric trolleys. My parents were mid-aged. My father, a successful accountant in pre-war years, now, due to language barrier, worked supervising machines in a factory. He spent four hours daily by crowded buses to get to and from work.

We had built our house, on weekends, with our bare hands—a small, one bedroom “box” on the outskirts of Greater Buenos Aires. I slept on a cot next to the dining table. Horses roamed freely on the grassy lands of our barrio, named Barrio Roca. All streets were dirt.

THE ROOF REPAIR

The torrential summer rains had beaten our house roof without mercy, and it leaked to the point we needed two containers for rain collection inside my parents’ bedroom.

“We can save money if I patch the roof myself,” Father said. “I need tar and a man to help me, but twice now I’ve asked the fellow down the block to come and he hasn’t shown up.”

“You don’t need anybody. Not with Junia and me here,” Mother said. “We are both strong and handy.”

“You’ll get burned.”

“We’ll stay out of your way, Stefan. I promise.”

Hesitant, Father said, “In that case, let’s do it today. The sky is clear, and there is no wind.”

Reconsidering, Mother said, “You’ve never repaired a roof before. I’m worried about you.”

“Nonsense. I’ll be fine.”

Father placed ten chunks of lustrous tar that he had bought into an oversized bucket. He spread a wire with a hook in the middle between two stakes he had hammered into the ground. Then, he built a mound of fire logs underneath the wire. Mother and I tried to help; instead, we hammered his finger.

“Please, leave me alone, you two,” he said. He placed the bruised finger in his mouth and sucked his knuckle. He showed us the kitchen door. “Go inside and get busy with something. Anything. I’ll call when I need you.”

Mother and I rushed into the bedroom and to the window. Father was bent, blowing on the logs and fanning them with a folded newspaper until a thin puff of smoke rose in the middle of the woodpile. He poured kerosene and threw wadded newspaper pages into the fire that soared with a raging orange-yellow flame crowned by a spinning cloud of black smoke.

Mother dashed outside and I followed behind her. The smoke choked me.

“You’re too close to the house, Stefan!” she yelled. “You’re going to burn everything we own!”

The fire in Nowa Wola, during the war years of my childhood, flashed through my mind.

“Please, Tatus, stop the fire. I’ll pump the water for you!” I screamed.

“Hush, hush. You’re going to scare the neighbors. Stop it, Marta, Junia,” Father pleaded.

He hung the bucket with tar on a hook over the dying flames as soon as the logs turned brilliant red.

“Now the real fire is taking over,” he said with satisfaction. “The other was just for show.”

Undisturbed, he winked at us and brought a ladder he rested on a house wall. Mother and I got busy pulling weeds in the vegetable garden, so we could stay close to him. The tar in the bucket bubbled and formed ever-changing black blisters that popped around and burst with force and increasing frequency. Sluggish glu-glu sounds alternated with rapidly crackling paf-pafs.

Father mixed the raging tar gargoyle with a stick. He climbed the ladder that Mother and I steadied with our bodies, carrying a rope with a metal hook at the end. On top of the flat roof, he tramped around in search of the holes while the housetop squeaked under the weight of his towering body.

“You’re going to come down through the ceiling!” Mother cried out, shaking her arms above her head.

“Calm down, woman. For heaven’s sake. Don’t you see I know what I’m doing?” Father snapped, but then he smiled and continued, “I found the first tear in the roof. I’m ready for the tar.”

He leaned on the edge of the roof, lost his balance for a moment, regained it, and lowered the rope to Mother. His hands trembled.

“Oh, no!” she shouted. “Oh, blessed Mother and Saint Stefan! I’m so afraid something will go wrong.”

She placed her hands on her hips and didn’t move to grab the rope.

“How many times do I have to ask for the tar?” Father said, raising his voice. “Place the hook under the bucket handle, please, but be very careful.”

Mother got hold of the rope and came closer to the bubbling bucket. She inserted the rope hook under the bucket’s handle and up it went, swinging from side to side and slopping globs of tar that stretched to long black threads flying randomly around us.

“Run away, Marta, Junia. The tar will burn your faces! Run! Quick!” Father yelled.

“I’m not moving. You’re in too much danger.”

Mother stomped her foot, turned to me and ordered, “You run, Junia. I have to stay here to help Tatus in case of an accident.”

“But I want to help too. I’m also afraid for Tatus,” I whined. I didn’t move.

Drawn by our boisterous ways expressed in Polish, six or seven amused, local Argentinian passers-by had gathered at our gate to watch our show. I gave them a nasty look, wishing they’d go.

A straining, red-faced Father hauled the bucket on the roof. Shaking his right hand to stress each word, he shouted, “I won’t patch the roof unless you two move away!”

We moved farther from the house, but we could still watch Father as he dipped Mother’s soup ladle into the bucket and poured the tar on the roof while steaming wisps spattered on him. He swore in Polish, “Cholera, psia krew!” shaking his head.

“Are you finished? Come down, Stefan. I implore you,” Mother begged him over, and over, but he used the tar to the last drop.

Accompanied by hearty applause and repeated “Bravos!” from the street crowd, Father stepped down the ladder and reached the ground. A tangle of black filaments crisscrossed his face and arms. He smelled like a freshly repaired road. Mother asked me to bring a chair, seated Father on it, and tried to use mineral spirits to rid him of the tar, but the skin beneath was blistered and sloughing off. She had to stop.

“You look like Jesus taken off the holy cross,” she sobbed, petting his balding head.

My stomach churned and a spasm pressed my chest. Had it not been for the Nazi and Soviet invasions of Poland in 1939, my parents wouldn’t have had to leave Poland. And in my father’s case, to be deported to the Gulag, and now. . . endure this suffering. This denigration. Their life before the war had been moderately comfortable in a large booming Polish city, Lodz.

A poisonous hatred clawed in me against the bastards Hitler and Stalin.

Sitting limp and pale, Father whispered, “It wasn’t such a big deal. Next time I’ll do better. I’ll always keep our little manger in good shape. It’s all we have. I’ll—”

Then he collapsed in my mother’s arms.

Junia Ancaya was born in Poland. Her family was torn apart by the simultaneous invasion of the Nazis and the Russians in 1939. Her father’s military unit was forced to surrender to the Russians, and he became a forced laborer for several years. He came very close to dying several times. Eventually he was reunited with his family, and they emigrated to Argentina. Junia became a physician and emigrated to the United States.

She has written two books about her own and her family’s experiences during and after World War II, Struggle for Freedom: Marta’s Courage: A Memoir and Stefan’s Journey on the Road of Sorrows.