The Children's War (89 page)

19

“T
EA?” ZOSIA
ASKED, AMAZED.
“I thought you wanted to talk seriously.”

“Yes,” her father answered, “seriously enough that we should both remain sober.”

“Oh, that bad, eh?” Zosia just could not bring herself to act serious; after all, she was no longer a little girl and she found her father’s summons to a tête-à-tête a bit too rich for words. Nevertheless, she had come as requested, alone, to her parents’ town house where they could discuss the details of her life in private.

“Sophie, please!” Her father switched to English for some unfathomable reason.

Zosia was no longer daunted by the language, and she quite happily switched as well. “Where’s Mother? Doesn’t she want to put in her two pfennigs’ worth?”

“Tuppence,” her father said with irritation.

“Two cents,” Zosia continued the linguistic game.

“Enough!” Alex smacked his hand on the table. Then he sipped his tea and wondered if vodka would not have been a better idea. “Your mother says she trusts you and that she doesn’t want to take part in this . . .”

“Charade? Cross-examination? Nonsense?” Zosia suggested in rapid succession.

Alex decided not to be drawn in. He relaxed a bit, began to reminisce. “You know, Zosia, we were among the first to try this—raising you children the way we did, underground, completely untainted by their society, ready to play roles. From the first we worried a great deal about what it would do to you all. We were very careful and took pains to try and make your lives as normal as possible. We watched Ryszard’s development and it all seemed to work out fine. He didn’t seem too traumatized by the dual personalities, by all the”—he looked for an appropriate word, decided on Zosia’s earlier suggestion—“nonsense.”

“But?”

“Well, with each successive child, we got more relaxed. I’m afraid by the time you came along, we were completely casual about it all. Even the guard duty—a necessary evil—no longer seemed so unusual. And I think you’ve latched onto that casualness. I think you have yet to learn how to be careful. And in our business, caution is all that stands between us and death.”

Zosia had heard some variant of the speech many times before and had learned that the quickest way to get it over was to appear to listen. Nevertheless she said, “It’s a
war,
Father. It is not a business—it’s a war. A bloody long war. And no matter how much you tried to make our lives normal, they can’t be, because it’s a war.” She did not bother to add, as she had on previous occasions, that she was happy with her life and with herself, and that she was a thoroughly competent and professional soldier and that her decisions, though apparently impulsive, were sound. That she had survived as long as she had was proof of that. She was not going to change, no matter what they said.

“Well, be that as it may.” Alex used the phrase as most people did, to politely ignore what had just been said, and continued, “I want to discuss several things with you. First off, Ryszard has informed me that all three of the men who were in some manner responsible for Adam’s death—”

“Murder,” Zosia corrected.

“—have managed to meet with unfortunate fates over the past year and a half.”

“Really?”
Zosia asked, intrigued.

“Yes, really. One murdered, one committed suicide, one seemed to step in front of a train. What do you know about this?”

“Nothing, of course,” Zosia answered, looking her father directly in the eyes.

Alex considered his daughter, weighing her answer in his mind. “Fine,” he said at last. “There’s no reason why you should, of course.”

“Of course. Judicial executions were ruled out, so naturally I obeyed the constraints of our treaties and let nature take its course. If they died, it was their fate. Now what else did you what to know?”

“Tell me,” Alex said, ignoring her tone, “what about this man, this English fellow?”

“What about him?” Zosia sipped her tea, made a face, then added a spoonful of sugar.

“What makes you think he’s genuine?”

“Ah, he’s genuine all right!” she assured him as she stirred the tea. “Physically he’s a mess: fractures, burns, scars, eyesight . . .” She shook her head. “Nobody would set themselves up quite so thoroughly to support an alibi.”

Alex disagreed but did not say so; instead he said, “It doesn’t matter, the point is, we don’t know anything about him. Nobody does. Despite his injuries, he might still be an infiltrator.”

“A plant! Why would anyone who has had all that done to them spy for the Nazis?”

“Perhaps to save his own life or maybe for a greater goal, say, to ransom a child.” Alex looked at his daughter and wondered what he could have been blackmailed into if Zosia had been at stake.

“Subtlety has never been their strong point, Dad. If they knew enough about us to put him in with us, then they would have destroyed us by now.” She sipped her tea again and made an even more disgusted face.

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Anyway, none of the facts supports that thesis. But more to the point”— she preempted his interruption—“I’ve talked with him, spent a year getting to know him. I trust him because I know him.” She stood and went to the cabinet. “Where the hell do you keep the booze?” She found the bottle before Alex could answer and, turning back to the table, added, “If you demand more of someone than that, then you’ve become a robot and we’re fighting for nothing at all.”

Alex looked somewhat taken aback by that vehement statement. He str his chin and uncharacteristically gave in. “All right. We’ll work on the assumption he’s genuine.”

Zosia looked disbelievingly at her father, then she smiled as she recognized that he had been ready to be convinced all along. She walked over to her cup and poured in some vodka. “Do you want some?” When her father nodded, she added some to his tea. “So what do you think?” she asked as she seated herself.

“Think?” Alex was stymied. He had not expected Zosia to want his advice, but he had been prepared to offer it in any case and most of his thought had gone into how he could get her to listen—not into what he would say! Deciding he would alienate her if he leapt in with negative comments, he started with, “Well, he’s intelligent. And well-spoken. And your mother thinks he’s charming.”

“Yes, he’s very sweet.”

Alex paused, but Zosia did not interrupt. “You know he loves you,” he added.

“Yes. He’s told me.”

“Joanna thinks the world of him.”

“Yes. She’s said so repeatedly,” Zosia agreed.

“I watched him playing football with her the other day in Ryszard’s back garden.”

“Yeah, he taught her the basics this summer.” Zosia smiled at the image her father had conjured up.

“He’s really good with her.” Alex sipped the strange alcoholic concoction in front of him.

Zosia tilted her head to look at her father. “I brought him here so that I could get your opinions. I didn’t expect all this shit in between, but if you
have
looked at him as something other than a threat, I’d like to know what you think.”

“Well, I’d be careful, child. He’s moody,” Alex offered tentatively.

“He’s been through a lot.”

“So have we all, in our own way.”

“Most of the time, back home, he’s quite happy. Really. You just haven’t seen him at his best. I think being out here makes him nervous—Ryszard’s house is too much like the Vogels’.”

“Hmm.”

“Really, I don’t think that will be a problem.”

“Are you in love with him?”

“Of course not,” Zosia snapped.

Alex nodded that noncommittal, I-don’t-believe-you nod.

“Why are we talking about love?” Zosia demanded. “I wanted to know what you think about using him for propaganda purposes! Like I told you about months ago!”

“You mean, you don’t love him?”

“Why would I? I just want to bring him to the point where he will speak on our behalf! What do you think? Do you think we could use him?”

“Use him,” her father echoed, disconcerted. “Zosia, it’s one thing to see possibilities in him for our publicly stated goals, but it would be very unwise if you are personally manipulating him toward that end. Are you?”

“Why would it be unwise?”

Alex furrowed his brow as he struggled to quickly organize his thoughts.
“You’re playing with fire, sweetheart. I see what you’re doing, but I think you’re too close to this thing to play this game. He loves you and I see something in your response to him that’s not as controlled as you’d like to believe. I don’t want to see you hurt.”

“How could I get hurt?”

Alex didn’t answer; instead he said, “Marysia says he cooks for you and takes care of all the other chores as well.”

“You know I’ve never been good at all that stuff. I depended on Ma too much.”

“You know, he’s very fragile, he’ll do anything to be liked right now,” Alex warned.

“Why does it matter why he does things?”

Alex regarded Zosia fondly, wondering how his daughter could be so mature in some ways and so adolescent in others. “Because if he comes to believe you’re
using him, things could turn very unpleasant. You know nothing about this man—nothing at all.”

Zosia sipped her tea. “He likes taking care of us, he’s said it makes him feel at home. Hell, he’s always doing stuff for everybody around the encampment—he must enjoy it.”

“And you genuinely like him? It’s not just a convenient excuse for using him?”

“Of course not! I mean, of course I like him, and, no, I’m not using him.” Zosia paused, then asked in retaliation, “Are you using Ma? Is Ryszard using . . . Well, forget that!”

“Touché.” Alex sipped his tea. It was true—he rarely helped out around the house, and all his children seemed to have taken after him. Perhaps Anna had done too much for them all their lives, but that was not the point of this discussion. It seemed they were only capable of touching on the most tangential issues. How could he explain his gut feeling to her?

Eventually he said, “I think he might work out for us, Zosia. I’ll talk to him a bit more and get a better feel for how effective he’d be and whether or not he’d like to do this sort of thing, then I’ll have to spend time organizing something. In the meanwhile I want you to stay out of it. Move him out of your flat, stop seeing him so much. Put some distance between him and you.”

“Why?”

Alex bent his head forward and rubbed the back of his neck. He knew he could not hold Zosia’s attention for long, and in any case he wasn’t quite sure what it was his intuition was telling him. When he put together what he had read in the psychiatrist’s report, his own experience and difficulties in adjusting as a foreigner in a foreign land, and his knowledge of Zosia’s character, all he could see was emotional disaster ahead for his little girl. Both her and the Englishman. Peter was floundering, in danger of being swept away by forces none of them properly understood, but of all people, Zosia was not the one to extend a hand into those dangerous waters. She was, herself, far too delicately balanced.

“Why, Dad?” Zosia repeated, rather exasperated. Alex sighed. “Torture is not really designed to break bodies—that’s easy enough—it’s designed to ruin a person and anyone associated with him or her. Your friend has a darkness within that will shade everything he experiences from now on. I don’t want you to go into the shadows with him.”