Part 1 (2/2)

As I was indeed becoming stronger and hardly coughed anymore, grandfather kept his promise about teaching me to drive. Tania was invited to come along: he called her his second-best pupil; I was to be the best. As soon as we left T. and reached one of the straight, long, white country roads, with fields of harvested rye and wheat stretching out on either side to distant lines of trees, Jan would rein in the horses, give a few turns to the brake crank, and Tania would climb on the box beside me. Then grandfather jumped on as well, told Jan to check the harness and get in the back, handed the reins to Tania, and released the brake. Tania touched the horses with the whip, and we would travel along at a clattering trot, my grandfather commenting on the smartness of the start and the length of the horses' gait. Finally, it was my turn. Grandfather seated me between his legs, Tania flushed and happy from the exercise was still beside us, and the horses were settling down to a walk. The secret, grandfather would say, as he handed the reins to me, was to keep the horses awake. But once the reins were in my hands, the pair usually stopped after a few steps. Jan would join in the general hilarity, then call out to the horses; they would start at a satisfactory pace while my grandfather showed me how to keep the reins off the horses' backs, how one's hands had to be steady and how one must never, never take one's eyes off the road ahead. When we reached a crossroad or a village, it was time for a lesson in turning the horses or stopping. Sometimes, we bought freshly laid eggs or white cow cheese from a peasant woman in a village. She would cross herself at the sight of me driving the carriage and wish us G.o.d's blessings.

THE holidays were over. The season of rains was beginning. Grandmother wanted to use the last few days before their departure to set our house in proper order. She bought new clothes for Zosia, whom she called her big grandchild, inspected Tania's furs, had a long conference with Tania about Bern and also about the cook and the cook's dispendious ways with veal and finally turned to putting up preserves. The jams and compotes had been done directly after Yom Kippur; now was the time for pickling cuc.u.mbers and preparing sauerkraut. holidays were over. The season of rains was beginning. Grandmother wanted to use the last few days before their departure to set our house in proper order. She bought new clothes for Zosia, whom she called her big grandchild, inspected Tania's furs, had a long conference with Tania about Bern and also about the cook and the cook's dispendious ways with veal and finally turned to putting up preserves. The jams and compotes had been done directly after Yom Kippur; now was the time for pickling cuc.u.mbers and preparing sauerkraut.

Grandmother's views on these subjects were firm. She tolerated neither shortcuts nor excess in spices. Tranquil-faced, with long skirts that almost touched the floor, she was installed in an armchair at our kitchen table. I was in her lap. The cabbage had already been sliced and waited in white enamel vats to be salted, sprinkled with peppercorns and bay leaves, and, last of all, pressed. This was the moment I waited for. The cook heaped the cabbage into wooden barrels, layer by layer, and then Zosia and the chambermaid, because this was the task for the youngest and prettiest, hiked up their skirts above the knees, climbed in, and trod the mixture with bare feet to squeeze out the water. I often saw women's thighs in the dignified setting of our beach, but these bodies were different from Tania's and her friends'. Watching them, I felt a mixture of oppression and elation, as I did when Zosia let me caress her face and neck. My grandmother, whose powers of observation seldom flagged, said that I was a little rascal, that soon I would sell my grandmother and Tania for a good pair of legs, that I was the image of my grandfather, only more sly.

In fact, Tania resembled her father, and photographs of my mother showed the same almost angular features, the same tense and erect bearing. My grandmother had been known as a beauty, but she was all roundness, different from her daughters. Her once-black hair, now completely silver, washed only in rainwater to preserve its rich color, was worn in a large bun. She had large, languid brown eyes. Her nose was small and perfectly formed; a small red mouth that had never been touched by lipstick was set in a gentle, slightly suffering smile. She wore heavy necklaces, bracelets and rings, with which I was allowed to play under her supervision. In spite of her attractions, my grandfather had been irrepressibly and indiscreetly unfaithful, his activities extending beyond the normal Cracow nightlife world to peasants on his property and, during a terrifying interval that preceded my uncle's death, to my mother's and Tania's university friends. My grandmother did not pretend to be uninformed. She did not make scenes and she did not forgive. She was bitter, dignified and frequently sick. Her liver, kidneys and heart were fragile in ways that only my father fully understood. Toward Tania, she was moody and demanding. She did not wish Tania to forget that her having remained unmarried was a bitter disappointment. Secretly, however, Tania's not finding a husband suited my grandmother: it meant she could devote her life to my father and me. Grandmother did not blame my father for my mother's death and considered him the worthiest of husbands and fathers. She would have liked him to marry Tania, according to tradition, but could she wish such a fate for that good man? Tania was her father's daughter, which in itself said plenty, and, to make matters worse, she was an intellectual, her mother thought. My grandmother was not very intelligent; intelligence, even if it was Tania's, made her nervous.

My grandfather used our last days together to train me in two new pursuits: jumping over fires and throwing a jackknife. Zosia played an important part in the fire game. Under grandfather's direction, she and I made piles of raspberry bush cuttings and dry flower stalks, carefully arranged in a straight line within a jump's distance. My grandfather lit the piles: on his signal, Zosia and I, holding hands, would jump or run over them and collapse breathless in each other's arms when we had finished. My grandfather waited till the flames were high. Then, having given me a hand salute, he would leap into flame after flame, emerging unscathed and triumphant.

We played with the jackknife sedately and alone. My grandfather wanted me to treat knives with the seriousness they deserved. He would draw a square in the dirt with the point and then small circles within the square. We stood a couple of paces away from the square, legs slightly apart and well balanced, and took turns throwing grandfather's heavy, much-used jackknife so as to make it land upright as close as possible to the center of each circle.

I would jump over fires with my grandfather during three more autumns; the game resumed with other companions, after the Warsaw uprising, in the frozen fields of the Mazowsze. By then, violent death was stalking him. But in that golden fall of 1937, while grandmother saw to the packing of their trunks and fussed over the train schedule, I was his hope, the little man to whom he was teaching all his secrets, the heir to his farms and forests and broken dreams.

I BEGAN BEGAN to eat better. My father said such improvement often followed a long fever. New tastes appealed to me. Grandmother made little toasts in the kitchen fireplace, holding the bread over the fire with long tongs. On the toast she put a duck or chicken liver grilled by the same method. When she and grandfather returned to Cracow, Zosia took over. She would laugh and feel me for fat, like a hen at the market, as she prepared the fourth or fifth liver of the morning. My father thought it best to have my progress verified. We went to Lwow, the nearest university city, to consult a lung specialist. He wore a beard, a pince-nez and a green eyeshade. When I asked him whether he liked me, which was then my opening conversational move with strangers, he begged Tania to remind me that children were not to be heard except when replying to a grown-up's question. The professor's stethoscope was very cold, the auscultation interminable; then Tania and I were asked to step into the waiting room while my father received his colleague's opinion. He emerged from the consultation room radiant. According to the great man, my lungs were clear but I behaved like a spoiled girl. I should be in the fresh air as much as possible. It would make my head as clear as my lungs. In consequence, my father required that the daily schedule be changed. So long as the weather continued sunny and dry, I would go sledding with Zosia every morning. Reading, piano lessons and such like could wait until the afternoon. A season of enchantment began. On the other side of T., beyond the railroad station, was a hill sloping to the riverbank. A horse-drawn sleigh took Zosia and me and our sled there every morning and came back at noon to fetch us. We slid from the highest point, down the steepest slope, at first Zosia steering and I lying on top of her. Then she taught me to steer by leaning or dragging my boot on the snow, and she helped only if we were headed into a clump of trees. We were alone; older children had cla.s.ses, and the hillside was too distant for nurses who had to pull their charges behind them. Zosia said this was our kingdom; I was the king and she the queen. We made snowmen and brought gilded paper crowns to put on their heads. to eat better. My father said such improvement often followed a long fever. New tastes appealed to me. Grandmother made little toasts in the kitchen fireplace, holding the bread over the fire with long tongs. On the toast she put a duck or chicken liver grilled by the same method. When she and grandfather returned to Cracow, Zosia took over. She would laugh and feel me for fat, like a hen at the market, as she prepared the fourth or fifth liver of the morning. My father thought it best to have my progress verified. We went to Lwow, the nearest university city, to consult a lung specialist. He wore a beard, a pince-nez and a green eyeshade. When I asked him whether he liked me, which was then my opening conversational move with strangers, he begged Tania to remind me that children were not to be heard except when replying to a grown-up's question. The professor's stethoscope was very cold, the auscultation interminable; then Tania and I were asked to step into the waiting room while my father received his colleague's opinion. He emerged from the consultation room radiant. According to the great man, my lungs were clear but I behaved like a spoiled girl. I should be in the fresh air as much as possible. It would make my head as clear as my lungs. In consequence, my father required that the daily schedule be changed. So long as the weather continued sunny and dry, I would go sledding with Zosia every morning. Reading, piano lessons and such like could wait until the afternoon. A season of enchantment began. On the other side of T., beyond the railroad station, was a hill sloping to the riverbank. A horse-drawn sleigh took Zosia and me and our sled there every morning and came back at noon to fetch us. We slid from the highest point, down the steepest slope, at first Zosia steering and I lying on top of her. Then she taught me to steer by leaning or dragging my boot on the snow, and she helped only if we were headed into a clump of trees. We were alone; older children had cla.s.ses, and the hillside was too distant for nurses who had to pull their charges behind them. Zosia said this was our kingdom; I was the king and she the queen. We made snowmen and brought gilded paper crowns to put on their heads.

Tania and my father were gratified by the results: I looked st.u.r.dier and I was growing. I stopped talking about the giant and after one story from Tania was prepared to say good-night and close my eyes. Exercise and good food alone were not responsible for this particular improvement. Since my fever fell, and my father no longer thought it necessary to look in on me in the night to listen to my breathing, Zosia had told me that I could sleep in her bed. She was sure that no giant would think of looking for me there. Therefore, as soon as Tania had given me the last of her sleep-well kisses, I would tiptoe into Zosia's room. She would be laughing or growling giant noises until I slipped under her huge goose feather bed. Our old agreements still held: I could play with her hair and touch her on the face and on the neck. I could also put my arms around her, and she would caress me until I fell asleep. Then if I thought the giant might come, I would quickly awaken her. She would be all warm and wet from sleep, often her nights.h.i.+rt had worked its way up, and when she pressed me against her I felt her naked legs, her stomach. She would talk to me very softly: giants and mean dwarfs were cowards. They might pick on a little boy all alone. But I was a big boy now, and, with her, I would never be alone. I would tell her I was still afraid and tug at her s.h.i.+rt so that as much of me as possible was right next to her, inside her smell and warmth. She would laugh. I was a little rascal and had to learn to behave, but in the meantime she would tickle me until I was quite sure the giant was not coming that night, and this worked so well that she agreed that, from then on, as soon as I came into her bed, she would pull up her s.h.i.+rt or let me creep under it, and I could touch her as much as I wished if I promised never, never to tickle her, even though she could tickle me as much as she liked. We honored this pact. Often, after she had fallen asleep, I stayed very quiet, with my eyes closed, and pa.s.sed my hands over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and her stomach. Her naked b.u.t.tocks were pressed against my legs. My heart beat very fast; then I too would fall asleep. And, though the fear is still vivid in my memory when I think of the door to my father's study and the porcelain stove beside it, the giant has never returned in my dreams again.

THE next March the Anschluss took place. My father listened to the BBC news explaining names and places. The fabric of his youth was unraveling. Hitler on Karntner-stra.s.se! Paradoxically, my father canceled the cruise that was to have taken Tania, him and me to the Mediterranean that summer. He said it was no time to be so far from home. Tania and he argued. She told him it was precisely the time to leave Poland, while it was still possible; there was talk that one could get visas for Australia and Brazil. My father said that was all right for the grandparents and her; they could even have me with them for a while, and I could return to T. when everybody felt calm again. But his place, his duty, were in Poland. Tania said he was a fool. How could he imagine my grandfather in Australia at the head of the family? If we were going abroad we needed him. next March the Anschluss took place. My father listened to the BBC news explaining names and places. The fabric of his youth was unraveling. Hitler on Karntner-stra.s.se! Paradoxically, my father canceled the cruise that was to have taken Tania, him and me to the Mediterranean that summer. He said it was no time to be so far from home. Tania and he argued. She told him it was precisely the time to leave Poland, while it was still possible; there was talk that one could get visas for Australia and Brazil. My father said that was all right for the grandparents and her; they could even have me with them for a while, and I could return to T. when everybody felt calm again. But his place, his duty, were in Poland. Tania said he was a fool. How could he imagine my grandfather in Australia at the head of the family? If we were going abroad we needed him.

My father's uniforms were taken out of the storage wardrobe. He inspected them and had two pairs of britches taken in-the diet he had been following for kidney stones made him lose weight. He and Tania argued about where the August vacation would be spent. My father thought I should be at my grandparents' place in the country. Tania said she wasn't going; he could take me there himself. But that was impossible: he was subst.i.tuting for the Catholic surgeon, who had already been called up on maneuvers. They settled on M., a popular spa some two hours away, famous for its mud and warm mineral water. The water would be good for my father's stones; he could join us on weekends. Bern was also going and would look after us when we were alone.

In M., we lodged in a brown wooden hotel standing in its own small park. A short distance from the park, down a shady boulevard, was the Kurhaus Kurhaus. In front of it was a kiosk for the orchestra. Off to the right one drank the water through angled gla.s.s straws. Zosia and I shared a room. Next door was Tania's room, with a large balcony, armchairs and an awning. When my father came, he took whatever room near us was free. Zosia wore blue cotton skirts with white blouses that Tania had imposed instead of a nurse's uniform. I had sailor suits; I seemed to be always propelling a hoop before me. Tania had never been more elegant. She wore long beige pleated skirts with sailor tops edged in navy blue (she claimed these were to go with my suits), dresses of white and blue and gray raw silk, and little hats, like helmets, of matching straw. Bern was often with us. He had an automobile the top of which could be taken down: a Skoda. He drove it himself. Tania claimed that he went too fast, and swore Zosia and me to secrecy. My father must not know about the risks we were taking on our drives through the woods near M. On Sat.u.r.days, my father appeared, arriving by train, sad, tired, ready for a good time. He held my hand on our walks and asked that I sit next to him when we went to a cafe for sweets or ices. At the very end of August, he came in the middle of the week: Tania and Bern were going to Lwow to see a cabaret act that was essential and could not be missed. It was the first time Tania had left me alone with my father. He asked me to come to his room as soon as I woke up. There were things he had to tell me. It turned out that he was privy to the secrets of an English spy named Alan, who had learned from a Chinaman by name of Tung Ting the true story of the kidnapping of the last empress of China. The story was involved and seemingly endless; he told it to me from then on in installments, on Sunday mornings.

Brusquely, August ended. We returned to T. Talk about Germany displaced most other conversation. For the first time, I heard the word ”Wehrmacht.” There were jokes about the Polish army: How many times can the same tank pa.s.s before Rydz-migy reviewing in the course of one parade? Answer: Exactly the number of times our only airplane can fly over his head during that parade. A few weeks later, Germany occupied the Sudetenland; we bravely sliced off a piece of Czechoslovakia without losing a single Polish life; soldiers returned with wreaths of wildflowers around their necks. Bene resigned and was replaced by Hacha. Now, there were jokes about Hacha's name-the last prewar jokes I remember. Kristallnacht happened and was spoken about in embarra.s.sed whispers. Rydz-migy and Beck, Poland's new leaders, would know where to draw the line; nationalism was not the same as lower-cla.s.s b.e.s.t.i.a.lity. There were certain subjects that my father and Tania did not want to discuss before Zosia. We would both be sent out of the room on some indispensable errand. Less than one year later came September 1939, and it was all over.

II.

IT HAD been raining very hard for more than two weeks. We heard that the river had overflowed and the bridge might be washed away. Our cellar flooded. My grandfather tipped the barrels of pickles and sauerkraut and put boards under them so they would not stand in water. He emptied potatoes and beets from the bins, and we stored them in bags that he and Tania carried into the kitchen and laundry room. Sacks of flour and rice also had to be moved, along with bags of dried beans that were less heavy. They said I could help with them. been raining very hard for more than two weeks. We heard that the river had overflowed and the bridge might be washed away. Our cellar flooded. My grandfather tipped the barrels of pickles and sauerkraut and put boards under them so they would not stand in water. He emptied potatoes and beets from the bins, and we stored them in bags that he and Tania carried into the kitchen and laundry room. Sacks of flour and rice also had to be moved, along with bags of dried beans that were less heavy. They said I could help with them.

Later that day, I was at the window of my father's study and watched water, now almost as high as the sidewalk, streaming in the direction of the railroad station. Across the street, in the house that belonged to the older of my father's Jewish colleagues, were stationed the SS. German troops overran eastern Poland in June 1941, after Hitler broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and attacked Russia. Dr. Kipper had not left with the medical staff when the Russians evacuated the hospital during the days of panic preceding the Germans' entry into T. Families were not allowed on the evacuation train to Russia, and my father and the younger Jewish doctor had left alone, very quietly. While he was getting his things together, I lay face down on the white rubber-covered couch in his examination room, crying, out of breath, unable to speak. Dr. Kipper refused to leave without Mrs. Kipper. The chief Russian doctor called him a deserter and said he would have him executed, but there wasn't time. Instead, Dr. and Mrs. Kipper were shot by the Germans a few days later, together with some other Jews. It was all done in the early afternoon, in the field on the other side of T. where Zosia and I used to go sledding, but they brought the bodies back to town in a truck and rounded up some other Jews to unload it. Earlier in the day, a good part of T.'s Catholic population had come out into the streets to greet the German soldiers. It was all very gay; these well-dressed warriors on their trucks and motorcycles, with leather cases and field gla.s.ses hanging from their necks, were a nice change after the shabby, bedraggled Russians retreating from the front. There were girls handing flowers to them. They were happy to have the Russians gone. Zosia wanted to take me on her shoulders to watch, but Tania absolutely forbade it, and she said Zosia wasn't even to go there herself. The roundup of the Jews, the shooting and then the corpses dumped on the street made people more cautious. One couldn't yet be sure that this was just something between Germans and Jews.

The rain became heavier. In a short time, the sidewalks disappeared under the water. The SS rushed out from the Kipper house in shorts, without their black boots, holding their carbines over their heads. They milled about for a while in knee-high water. Then the Feldwebel Feldwebel shouted an order, and they all ran off in a single file toward the station. shouted an order, and they all ran off in a single file toward the station.

I went back to the kitchen. Tania was cooking lunch. My grandfather smoked. He had recently acquired a new sort of cigarette, which was made like a two-part tube. One inserted tobacco into the thin paper part with a little metal pusher that resembled a lady's curling iron. It was important to be careful, or the paper would tear. He was teaching me how to do it correctly. The other tube was like a cigarette holder. My grandmother was wrapped in her fur coat against the humidity. She wanted to know what we would do when the kitchen flooded. Tania a.s.sured her that G.o.d would look after us in this as in every other adversity; besides, what difference did it make? We wouldn't be staying in the house much longer.

My grandparents came to T. in September 1939 to escape from the Germans and to be near us in this time of danger. They lived in our house. Relations between the mother and the daughter had not improved, and now practically all the work of the house fell to Tania. Most often, she refused grandmother's offers of aid, saying that she needed real help, someone to do something, and not instructions about how this or that should be done. Grandfather alternated between asking Tania to think what kind of example she was setting for me and laughing and teasing. He claimed that this was real peasant-woman talk and that Tania should be congratulated on her progress in learning proletarian manners.

Before the Russians took him with them, my father had been careful to stay out of this sort of family discussion. He would only say that he felt guilty about how tired Tania was. It was he, after all, who had decided, very soon after the Russians arrived in 1939, that we could keep Zosia if she was willing to help a little with the housework and that all the others had to be let go. One could not carry on like bourgeois, he explained, especially with the grandparents right there. Landowners were considered the worst cla.s.s. One denunciation would send us all to Siberia. He joked that we would not find the House of the Dead a satisfactory family residence.

Now Zosia was gone as well. Aryans were no longer allowed to work for Jews. Zosia cried, saying this had nothing to do with us, that I was her child. She wanted to stay. She would become Jewish like me. But her father came from Drohobycz and asked to speak to Tania. He told her it was high time his child stopped wiping the rear end of a little Jew b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He was prepared to let bygones be bygones, but there had to be compensation. What kind of a future could Zosia have with the smell of Jew all about her? Fortunately, my grandfather was out of the house. Tania asked Zosia's father to wait at the railroad station and please to remember next time he called on us to come to the kitchen door. She went to get her beaver coat and hat and gave them to Zosia and also gave her money. Grandmother too wanted to give Zosia a fur, but Zosia cried very hard and refused, and instead grandmother gave her the ring with little diamonds she always wore on her second finger. Then Zosia packed her things. She asked to wait for my grandfather, but Tania said to run along, that all this crying and saying good-bye was going to make me regress permanently to being a two-year-old.

Tania turned out to be right about the house. A few days after the flood receded, a German officer presented himself, very politely asked Tania if she was the owner and told her that we must move out by the end of the next day. The house was needed for Gestapo headquarters. We could take our clothes and personal items; everything else was to remain. An inventory would be made. He suggested she be present to make sure that everything was quite in order and said it was pleasant in this part of the world to hear German spoken correctly.

Our tenants were also ordered to leave. Pan Kramer came to see Tania and told her that he was embarra.s.sed to propose such a thing, but if we wished, we could move together. He knew of an apartment near the market, a couple of houses from his shop. It was very modest, not the sort of thing she had ever seen, but it was available and it was furnished. The old lady who lived there was willing to give it up and go to live with her children. The rent was too high for the Kramers alone. Since we were old neighbors, perhaps we would not mind sharing. They were very quiet, spent most of the day in the shop, and Irena and I could play together. My grandfather was consulted and he agreed. There were no apartments for Jews in T.; Jews were all being thrown out. He would see the man who had stabled his horses about carting our things.

The new apartment was in a house that was four stories high. We were to live on the third floor, which was hard on grandmother because of her heart. One pa.s.sed through a gateway wide enough for a horse-drawn cart into a rectangular courtyard. Above it, balconies on which the apartments opened ran around each floor, linked by stairs. Our apartment consisted of three rooms and a large kitchen that my grandmother declared was quite good. The three Kramers were to sleep in one room; Tania insisted they take the largest one. My grandparents had the room next to them, where there were two beds. Tania and I took the living room; she would sleep on the couch and I on a folding cot we could open at night. We discovered there was no running water; one got it from the pump in the courtyard. Pan Kramer showed me how to work the pump, with short strokes at first to get the water to flow and then slow and steady; that was how to do it without getting tired. Irena and I were to be responsible for the water: that was how one became careful not to waste it.

We made yet another discovery. There were no toilets, just one room on each floor with a sort of box and an enamel bucket inside it for all the tenants to share. One could use it or one could use a chamber pot. One emptied the bucket or chamber pot in the outhouse in the yard. One could also go to the outhouse in the first place. I asked Tania which she intended to do. In reply, she slapped my face very hard, right in front of Pan and Pani Kramer and Irena. It was the first time that she had ever hit me; she had fired Zosia's immediate predecessor and made her leave in the middle of the night because that Panna had slapped me.

This time it was grandmother who flew to my defense. She said she was ashamed; Tania should move in with Bern if that was how she meant to behave. Grandfather told them both to stop and asked me to come for a walk with him.

I was crying, and I noticed that he was crying a little also. All the same, he told me crying was no use. Everything had changed. We were in for a difficult time. People would act very differently because they were afraid and confused; even he was afraid. He thought what I must learn was to watch very carefully and try to understand things as much as possible with this in mind. He would try to help, but I had to remember that grandmother was sick, that they were both old and that Tania was the one who would take care of me until the war ended and my father came back. Afterward we walked to the end of the street, where there was an empty lot with piles of gravel and larger stones and a lumberyard that seemed deserted. Still farther off was the river. Some Catholic boys, older than I, were throwing stones, aiming at trees. We stopped to watch. They threw very hard and accurately. I asked grandfather if he would teach me to throw like that. He said that he couldn't; being a bad thrower himself was something he had regretted all his life. There was another skill, though, that was equally useful. We went to the marketplace and bought some thick red rubber and a patch of leather. Then we returned to a pile of gravel in the empty lot. My grandfather cut a low, forked branch from a tree, peeled it, threaded the rubber strip through two holes he made in the leather, and then fastened the rubber to the fork. He explained that he had just made a slingshot and that we were going to practice using it right then, and as often as we got a chance, but I must not tell grandmother about it, and I must not aim at houses because I could break a window. When I got good at it, we would try shooting crows.

Later that afternoon, Bern came to see us. He brought a bouquet of yellow asters for my grandmother. She thanked him and asked if they were to match her new Jewish star. He also brought cigarettes and vodka and said he didn't know which was for Tania and which was for my grandfather. Everybody laughed at that, and my grandfather told him he was sure the cigarettes had to be for Tania; if Bern had intended to bring Tania liquor he would have brought champagne.

When the bottle was almost empty, and the Kramers had gone to their room, Bern said that he had been asked to become a director at the Jewish community office the Germans were forming and that he would do it. It might be a way to keep his garconniere garconniere and help us with all sorts of things like ration cards; he might be able to get Tania a job. It would become dangerous to be unemployed. He did not care what people thought; if he did not do it, the Jewish-question people at the and help us with all sorts of things like ration cards; he might be able to get Tania a job. It would become dangerous to be unemployed. He did not care what people thought; if he did not do it, the Jewish-question people at the Kommandantur Kommandantur would pick some illiterate black-market profiteer instead. The only other solution for him was the forest, but it was hard to make contact with the partisans, and besides, he did not want to leave Tania and the rest of us without any protection. would pick some illiterate black-market profiteer instead. The only other solution for him was the forest, but it was hard to make contact with the partisans, and besides, he did not want to leave Tania and the rest of us without any protection.

It was true that, quite apart from what perhaps went on between him and Tania, Bern was now our only friend. The Catholic surgeon, like my father, had made his way back to T. when the Polish front collapsed in 1939 but had not been evacuated to Russia. He had been polite to Tania each time she went to see him at the hospital, but Tania said she had a feeling her welcome was wearing out. He had told her right away that it was impossible to give her work at the hospital. If my father had only listened to him before the war and we had all converted, the situation might be different. Now it was much too late even for that; he was sorr

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