Who Knows Best?…by Leora Freedman
Count Perkosky and his wife Amelia were descended from Polish nobility. At one time, they owned a vast system of estates in Poland; whole villages were filled with people working for them. The Perkoskys were very cultured and enjoyed skiing in the Alps. After the Second World War and the Soviet takeover, the Perkoskys fled Poland and came to southern British Columbia. They were attracted by the beautiful, inexpensive land in the B.C. interior as well as the good skiing. There were no ski lifts in the interior at that time, so the Perkoskys climbed up the mountains before skiing down.
Evan Feuerstein and his girlfriend Joannie had fled New York for southern British Columbia — to find a place for an intentional community. The young couple’s ideas about utopia never interested Count Perkosky, and Evan and Joannie were slightly scandalized by the Perkoskys adherence to nudism. Locals warned them that to meet Count Perkosky on his isolated property, it was best to arrive nude. One warm day, Evan and Joannie bumped down the logging road in their old jeep, wearing nothing except small cloth coverings they had sewn to hide their private parts, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The Count received them warmly. He was suntanned all over, though Amelia was pale and wore a broad-brimmed hat to protect her complexion while she tended their large organic garden.
At first Evan was skeptical when the Count said that he and his forebears were always on good terms with the Jews in their region of Poland. Evan knew that many former Nazi collaborators were living comfortable, bucolic lives in Canada, and he once almost got into a fight in a pub over an antisemitic remark. But the Count was an ardent scrapbooker, and one of his scrapbooks preserved a letter of thanks written in French by a rabbi to the Count’s father. There was a courtly ease in the way the Count, who was very tall, straight, and strong, spoke to Evan, as if the Count were seeing not Evan but Evan’s forebears in Poland with whom the American Feuersteins had lost contact. Evan realized that the Count knew things he himself didn’t know.
Amelia and the Count had a son, Andy, who grew up in British Columbia and became a well-off, successful logger. The Count did not drive; previously, when the family needed groceries, they went down the lake by boat, or took their sled in winter. But Andy bought a shiny red pickup. He liked to drive around the back country drinking beer, and he enjoyed hunting and fishing. It wasn’t lost on the Count and Amelia that their son became a Canadian version of a Polish villager, richer but not very different from the people who had worked on the Perkoskys’ estates in Poland. Amelia was heartbroken. But Andy’s life didn’t bother the Count, who had accepted peacefully the change in their fortunes that precluded living a cultured life. He had faith in his son to know what was best.
Copyright © Leora Freedman 2021
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