Wartime Lies (20 page)

The day passed slowly. Stefa said it was going to snow, but it didn’t. It just got colder and windier. All the good of our fire seemed to disappear in the gale. An old cow, almost entirely black, with heavy eyes, was my favorite. She liked being scratched and talked to. I would put my arms around her neck and stand for a long time pressed against her flank. When the warmth of her body had penetrated mine, I would go back to Stefa and the boys and our fire. We talked about the pig killing, about the hams and the sausages Kula would be selling, and about Christmas. I told them the Russians would soon be in Piasowe. Then the war would be over, and Tania and I would go
back to the city. I still didn’t want to mention T.; that seemed like revealing too much of our story without need. Warsaw was destroyed; I knew we couldn’t go there. I said we would probably live in Cracow. That was where my grandparents were from. I told them grandmother was dead, but we would move in with my grandfather. We would invite them all to visit in the winter, when there wasn’t that much work in Piasowe. We would send a horse and cart to take them to G. and train tickets for Cracow. Or perhaps I would come to travel with them so they wouldn’t be startled by the railroad and the big city. They shook their heads and said I would be too far away to think of them, but I was excited by the vision of Cracow and being with my grandfather in his house and made more promises: I thought my grandfather would want to come with me from Cracow to Piasowe. Then they would see how strong he was and how he could handle animals. After a day of meeting everyone and wandering through the fields, we would all leave together.

All the while, fear like nausea was rising to my throat. What if the refugee in Bieda wasn’t grandfather? Where would we look for him? Would Tania be safe walking to Bieda? What would she do if she was stopped by a German patrol or if some peasant in his cart, seeing her on foot and alone, decided to rob her instead of letting her ride with him? Never, since Lwów, had she left me for a whole day or gone so far away from me. The boys in the pasture liked me, but they were not my friends. Only Stefa was my friend here, and perhaps Kulowa, but without Tania I was like a stray cat that anyone could stone. I
decided to tell them about my father as well: I said I was sure he would return from the prisoner-of-war camp, in his officer’s uniform, to look for Tania and me as soon as the Germans left. He was a major; he would be wearing a pistol on his belt and perhaps a sword. The police would have to help in the search. He would not give up until he found us.

The wind was blowing harder. The cows became nervous; they stopped grazing and began to low and move about uneasily. Stefa said that if they were off their feed it was best to take them back, and that is what we did. I finished with the cows in the stable, but Tania still had not returned. Kulowa told me Kula was asleep; it served him right to be sick after all the vodka he had drunk; who did he think he was to be in his feather bed on a weekday? That scoundrel Tadek had also disappeared, busy vomiting somewhere. She was making cheese, pouring curdled milk into rectangular linen pouches. The whey had to be squeezed out carefully into a basin. Then the cheeses, in their pouches, were arranged on a board, covered by another board with a weight on it, and left to rest. I helped, holding the pouches for her. We tasted some of the moist, fresh cheese. We fed the poultry and the pigs, and I helped Kulowa milk the cows, putting hay into their mangers so they would keep quiet. Masia had also disappeared.

We ate the evening meal late, after Kula woke up. By then Tadek and Masia were also in the kitchen; only Tania wasn’t there. I told Kulowa I didn’t know where she was. The others didn’t ask; it seemed to me they didn’t mind
being by themselves, with just their little cowherd keeping his mouth shut except to thank Kulowa for each piece of food. Then it was time for bed; Masia dragged in her bedding, I brought in Tania’s and mine, Kula said Tania must have found a softer mattress somewhere else, they snuffed out the lamp, and I was still alone.

T
ANIA
woke me from a deep sleep. She was shivering from cold and sobbing terribly and kissing me. I kissed her too and stroked her hair and after a while she told me what had happened. Getting to Bieda had taken longer than she had expected. She must have walked two-thirds of the way before a peasant with a cart going in the right direction caught up with her. He was a quiet man with a good, fast horse; he refused to take money from her. When they got to Bieda, he showed her the house of the peasant who dealt in vodka and drove on. She had decided to start out by doing a little business and then casually asking questions about refugees from Warsaw or elsewhere who might be in the village. This peasant was very cautious. At first he wouldn’t talk about
bimber
at all, pretending he just sold regular vodka. He loosened up after she made it clear how well she knew Nowak, and they drank a glass of
bimber
together. All the while, she was telling him that she had many sources of supply and just wanted to know if he needed more
bimber
than he was getting from Nowak. He didn’t seem very interested, so she said that she regretted there was no business the two of them could do, but maybe, while she was in Bieda, she should see if there were any refugees who had jewelry to sell; she also dealt in that.

At that, the peasant laughed and said she had come too late, they had had a very fine refugee, with a gold watch and gold rings and money, but the Germans came last week and shot him right against the barn wall. He pointed to his own barn. He was here, that Pan—and the peasant named my grandfather—drinking with me just like you, when they drove up in a big car, four of them with Pan Miska, who has been living in Zielne, over that way. It seems this Pan with gold was a Jew who owned a big farm and two forests. Pan Miska was his estate manager. My Pan was always helping peasants here when a cow or a horse was sick, he knew more about it than a veterinarian, and one day he walked over to Zielne to give a hand with a calf being born. That’s where Miska saw him and right away decided this Jew shouldn’t live to go back to his estate; better give him to the Germans before the Russians come. Miska told it to the Pan right to his face, before all the peasants standing around in the stable, and my Pan got his hands out of the cow, wiped them on the straw and hit Miska across the face with the stick he always carried with him. Then he spat and said next time Miska wanted to talk to him he should remember to take off his hat first. The peasants were laughing so hard their stomachs hurt, but the Pan went on working with the cow as though nothing had happened. Some of us told the Pan to run away, because Miska wasn’t joking, but the Pan wouldn’t listen. So they came in the car with Miska, spoke in German, and shot the Pan in the head. Miska is still in Zielne, if you want to see him: he might want to sell the gold he took from the Pan’s body. Tania said she asked the peasant for another vodka and then yet another, she was so
weak, and then she thanked him; she would see about going to Zielne. After she left him, she walked around Bieda, across the fields, in circles, realizing she had not asked what they had done with grandfather’s body but too scared to go back. Then she lay down in a pasture and fell asleep and woke up before she froze, and she wished she hadn’t awakened, except for me, because now I only had her left in the world. Night was falling. She began to walk back to Piasowe. She had not eaten and kept stumbling and falling down, and sometimes she wasn’t sure that she was on the right road. But she did make it, she kept on saying, more than five hours in the dark, but she made it. We were both crying now and we cried until the Kulas woke up and we had to get ready for work. This was the worst day in our lives.

A
ND
so Tania went as usual to see Komar and sell their
bimber
. I took the cows to the pasture. A headache came upon me that kept on throbbing, and although it was again very cold and felt like snow, I was hot and sweating and had to keep unbuttoning my layers of coats to let the air cool my skin. In the evening, Tania felt my head and said I had a big fever. She said my eyes were strange and she could hear a noise in my chest she didn’t like. At once she told Kulowa I would have to stay in the house under the feather bed until she was sure I was well; she would pay for having Stefa take out the cows. My fever didn’t go down, although Tania made me take aspirin she brought from W., and I remained on my mattress till I lost count of the days, the kitchen turning around me, Kulowa
giving me water while I sweated and shook. Tania was sharp with Kula when she came home in the evenings; then she would give him
bimber
and even vodka to make up.

One night she got drunk with him and Tadek; through my headache, I heard them singing and banging on the table with their glasses to keep time. I kept having strange half dreams; Tania told me it was the fever, she was sure I had pneumonia. There was nothing to do but keep quiet and very warm. On Christmas day, Nowak came with another scarf for Tania and lemon hard candy for me. He was calling her now by her first name only; perhaps saying Pani was too much trouble. The whole family was in the kitchen, eating the ham Kula had kept for the holiday. The smell made me sick. All at once, I heard Tania shouting at Nowak that he must never again touch her arm, never again forget his place, the war was ending and so was her acquaintance with louts like him.

A few days later I was still weak and dizzy but no longer felt hot. Tania came back to the house after the evening meal; she said she had eaten with Komar. When she lay down beside me, she said she did a terrible thing when she insulted Nowak. Komar had just explained to her how Nowak was going to get his revenge. Apparently, Nowak was convinced we were Jews. He had already told the Polish police in W.; it wasn’t a question of money because the Polish police didn’t want to have anything to do with Jews anymore. Instead they gave the information to the Germans. The Gestapo would come to get us. When she protested to Komar that we weren’t Jews at all and that
she could show him our papers, Komar asked her not to be stupid, it was all the same to him: he would help us because she was his friend. He would come with his cart and two horses while it was still dark and drive us to the train in Rawa. She trusted him; he even settled his accounts with her. In a moment, she would wake up Kulowa and tell her we were going. She would say there was such a rasping in my lungs that she had to take me to the city to a doctor, even if it meant traveling in this terrible cold.

W
E WERE
in Kielce, where the first train we were able to board in Rawa had taken us. The front was approaching. The drumming of the artillery never stopped; Tania said the Russians were only twenty kilometers away. My fever had returned and with it the headache. Tania and everything else around me seemed uncertain and shifting, like pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope, every turn of which brought a new hurt. A doctor came, listened to my lungs, and said the pneumonia was over. Now I had pleurisy; it would probably pass. I should take more aspirin. He was able to sell Tania some.

Once again, we were living in a rented room, in the apartment of a woman who took lodgers. Once again, Tania had found her through the buffet in the station. The apartment was long and brown, our room was brown and greasy; the overhead lamp, useless because there was no electricity, swayed with each wave of shelling. Sometimes a little plaster fell.

In bed Tania lay by my side all dressed. I could not bear to have her under the quilt next to me. I was too hot. We
both slept very deeply for short periods. Then I would begin my horrible coughing, and if she did not wake up, I would shake her and ask for milk. But there was no milk left in Kielce. Instead, Tania would heat water with sugar on the little Primus stove and try to get me to drink it, always with more aspirin.

I thought that the bed and my body had grown extraordinarily long. To cool myself, I would stretch my legs on top of the quilt. Far away were my feet. Between the toes I could discern dark bushes crawling with life. Tania put cold, wet cloths on my head. She said these things were as unreal as my old giant; the Russians were before Kielce, in a few days I would be in a clean bed of my own in a large sunny room; she would give me oranges and chocolates. When I wasn’t coughing too much, Tania sang to me. There was an old song: Maciek is dead, laid out on a board, but if the music plays he will dance some more…. What a polite boy he was…. What a pity he couldn’t live forever….

Bombs and artillery shells began to fall on Kielce. They were louder than anything we remembered from Warsaw. Late one afternoon, the glass in our windows shattered, and a furious wind began to blow through the room. The landlady came to say everyone was going to the cellar. She did not think we should remain in the room; I could go down wrapped in a feather bed. The cellar would not be colder than the room without windowpanes.

It was like the cellar in Warsaw, only colder and even wetter. A naphtha lamp lit the space and the people inside
it, some sitting on crates, some on chairs they brought from their apartments. They all seemed to talk in whispers. The explosions were very near now. There was also the noise of rifles and machine guns. Some of the men went out to look. They said there were soldiers running and shooting at one another in the street; a tank was stopped at the corner, its cannon firing shell after shell. Was it German or Russian? Tania had a bottle of water. She gave me little sips from it. I fell asleep in her lap. An enormous explosion awakened me. The cellar was now full of dust, a part of the ceiling had collapsed, someone was shining a flashlight at the cracks spreading from the hole. The house had been hit. Then there was another, stronger bang and cries for help. The door to the cellar had disappeared in a torrent of crumbling bricks. We were buried. The old woman who had cried out was being helped out from under the stones. Her head and legs were bleeding. Tania stood up and said loud enough to be heard over the din that everybody should try to keep calm, she knew how to clean and bandage wounds. When she finished, and the old woman was just whimpering quietly, somebody asked, Why doesn’t this Pani lead us in prayer? So Tania began to sing. She sang the most holy of Polish hymns to the Virgin. We all sang with her, begging the Mother of God to bring us a time of goodness.