Wartime Lies (7 page)

Tania was spending very few nights at home now. She would drop in unexpectedly, around midday. They would give her permission to leave the office to see her sick mother. She told us that Erika, Reinhard’s daughter, had arrived. She was eighteen, very nice but badly dressed, like a real German. Reinhard got the second apartment; it had belonged to Jews. They were fixing it in the evening, after Tania’s office closed. She said that every time Reinhard brought china or crystal for the apartment she had to laugh inside; she was wondering if it would turn out to be our own. Reinhard and she had to be very careful not to let their friendship be noticed. Nobody minded if he simply protected her, her work was so good; but having an affair with a Jewish woman was punished by death.

Late one afternoon Tania arrived pale and out of breath. Grandmother and I were sitting in the kitchen with the Kramers. Tania had no food with her, she was not taking off her coat and she did not sit down. She just stood there, staring at my grandmother and looking uncomfortable. I
thought that perhaps something had happened to grandfather and asked if she could come with me to our room; I wanted to show her something. She followed me, quickly closed the door behind us, said I was at last becoming intelligent, and sent me back to the kitchen to get grandmother. As soon as we were together, she told us in whispers that the next morning, before dawn, all Jews in T. would be taken away. Reinhard had just found out; we were to keep this to ourselves or we would all be dead. She would go back to the kitchen in a moment, act as normal as she could, and then say good-night and leave for the office. We must remain very quiet, no packing, just take grandmother’s jewelry, her fur coat and my warm coat, and be downstairs at the entranceway at eight sharp, like the evening grandfather left. Reinhard would come for us; she would try to be with him. Then she kissed us, said not to be afraid and was gone.

We ate a silent supper with the Kramers. Grandmother complained that she was feeling her liver again. She would lie down in her room and rest. She wanted me with her; I could play with Irena another time. Once out of the kitchen, we got our things together. Grandmother turned out the light. A few minutes before eight, we went through the corridor of the apartment—my grandmother saying, Help me, please, to the toilets—and then, as quickly as she could manage it, we stumbled in the dark along the balcony and down to the gate. The car was there, with Tania.

Reinhard’s apartment was on the ground floor in a building less than a kilometer away. The curtains were
tightly drawn; all the lights were on. I had become unaccustomed to so much light; our electricity was always being cut. In the dining room, there was a chandelier, and the sideboard and various little tables were crowded with porcelain figurines and lamps of various sizes with tassels hanging from their shades. For the first time, I could take a good look at Reinhard. He was bald. I had expected his sleeve to be empty, but he seemed to have two arms. Then I noticed that on his left hand he wore a glove and that he used that hand only to push with. Fruit, cakes and sausages were set out on the dining-room table. Erika appeared carrying a teapot. She and Tania were making a lot of noise, asking my grandmother if she was comfortable and telling her to have some of the ham that Tania presented in a little dish—it had no fat, it was perfectly safe for her. Reinhard leaned back in his chair. He had unbuttoned his jacket. I saw that he wore white suspenders. He motioned for me to sit down next to him and said we had the same important woman in our lives. My aunt was very beautiful and very good. We would drink
Brüderschaft
. He filled his glass, told me it was cognac and I could have a little too to put me back in the saddle after the adventures of the evening. Then he showed me how to hook my arm with his good arm, look deep into his eyes and gulp the drink down. In no time, my German would be as good as Tania’s, he assured me. He would put Erika in charge.

Soon it was time for sleep. Tania said that for that night they would make up a bed for me on the dining-room sofa; later they would get a cot, so I could be with Erika.
As I had no pajamas, it was all right to stay in my clothes. She kissed me and said I had been polite; she was proud of me.

I think I fell asleep the moment she left; I had no dreams. But almost as abruptly, I was awake again. Tania and Reinhard were in the room, talking in loud whispers. Then Reinhard went out, and I heard Tania crying harder than I had ever heard before. I got up from the sofa and went to her. She was standing at the window, the curtain parted so that she could see out and yet remain hidden. I stood beside her, and she knelt down and put her arms around me. We were looking out on the long avenue that cut T. in two, leading directly to the railroad station. The sky was already turning gray. Here and there a streetlamp was burning. In that uncertain light, we saw the Jews of T. marching to their train in a long, disorderly procession. They carried suitcases and bundles; even children had packages. They must have been given time to pack. A great many Germans were on the sidewalks. Polish police hurried people along. There were no Jewish militiamen with them. Tania whispered that that was because they were also being marched to the station. We were close to the people on the street, at our ground-floor window, but I heard absolutely no sounds. I tried to look for the Kramers and Irena, but they were so many and it was so hard to distinguish faces that I never saw them. After perhaps an hour, the avenue was empty. They must have all reached the station. Reinhard was right. By Christmas of 1941, T. had become
judenrein
.

T
HE
door between Tania and Reinhard’s room and mine was opened just a crack, letting in light and the sound of the Wehrmacht radio’s last bulletin for the day. It was a woman’s voice, lively and confident. The developments again were favorable for the Reich; the newscaster passed in review the positions of troops from Africa to the eastern front, paying homage to the steadfastness with which Germany’s soldiers bore the cold and snow in the empty Russian steppes. As every evening at eleven, she played “Lili Marleen” and, going off the air, wished us a good night. We were in Lwów. The open door was a concession of Reinhard’s. Erika had gone back to Bremen; I was afraid to be alone; the open door was better in the end than having Tania get up each time I began to sob. Still, this sort of yielding to my caprices or nerves was against good principles of education, and Reinhard liked to justify it each time by the benefit I derived from the radio. Listening was good for my German and for my general understanding of the world situation.

I liked the songs on the radio. They were about soldiers
and the girls waiting for them or welcoming them home. Erika had taught me the words to many of them; we used to sing them together. My favorite, which we heard almost as often as “Lili Marleen,” was about a soldier keeping watch alone in a wintry field. He thinks of Anna and his luck: soon it will be time to go home. He has been through much dirt and rubbish, but all of that will soon disappear. Then came the refrain known, so the song assured us, to every private and lieutenant: Everything will pass, everything will go by, but those who love each other will forever be true.

I tried to apply this notion to myself. It was clear that I loved Tania and my grandparents and, of course, my father, although he had left me behind and might be dead anyway. This would not change; we would remain true. I was close to loving Erika. I was not sure anymore about Zosia and preferred not to think about her. On the other hand, it was hard to imagine how the dirt and rubbish would disappear. The war would surely end someday, but what would happen then? Reinhard was convinced that Germany would win; it was winning. The occasional retreats of the Wehrmacht near Moscow, usually followed by advances, were just the hunter’s skill deployed against a dying bear; none of the other powers, not even England, could resist German hardness. I felt he was right. German soldiers were better. Nothing would stand in the way of their tanks and guns. But, in that case, were we not a part of the rubbish that had to disappear, perhaps even should disappear, for the sake of the future? How would that be accomplished? I put these questions to
Tania. She would shake her head and say that nobody had ever defeated Russia or England; we just had to stay alive long enough. Deep in my heart, I did not believe her. The soldiers who were being routed on every front would not suddenly stop being inferior and weak. Besides, even if the war were to end without Germany ruling the whole world, I did not see how we could be rescued. The Gestapo would never allow us to walk out free from the apartment Reinhard had given us in Lwów, so that we could board some train for London or New York. The Germans would kill us as soon as they found out what Reinhard had done.

I missed Erika. She was a part of the future, even if the rest of us—Tania, grandfather, grandmother and I—were not. When we were still in T., she had told me about Germany and how strong Germany was. She was not in the Hitlerjugend, because she didn’t like meetings and marching around. Her uncle and aunt wanted her to join, but Reinhard didn’t care. Just like everyone else, though, she had done national service. It was required of girls and boys, first during summer vacations and then, for at least one year, full time. She had already finished her term in the countryside. She had worked on a farm. She learned to milk cows, to mow and bale hay and to work a harvester. They drilled just like soldiers. It was glorious. At night, they slept in large, airy barns, one for the boys and one for the girls, but if a boy wanted to take a girl into a haystack, he could. The life was healthy. She showed me how strong she had become: her breasts and the muscles in her arms and thighs were all hard. She could wrestle
Reinhard’s good arm down anytime. The people of his generation had spent too much time in beer halls. That was why everything about them was so complicated.

She lived in Bremen with her aunt and uncle. Her aunt was her mother’s sister. She had been with them since her mother died, when she was a baby. That is what made her and me alike, two orphans, brother and sister souls. She thought her aunt liked Reinhard better than her husband. The apartment in Bremen was very small, nothing like this Jewish apartment in T. When Reinhard came to visit during her school vacations, he had to sleep with Erika in her bed, since there was no spare bed. Her aunt would get into their bed in the morning, as soon as the uncle went to work, and they would all joke together. The aunt would do anything to get close to Reinhard. My aunt was different, she and my grandmother were refined; they were ladies; one could learn from them every day. She didn’t care about Reinhard and my aunt; at least Tania wasn’t her mother’s sister. So far as she was concerned, it wasn’t our fault we were Jews. There used to be nice Jews in Bremen, like the ones Reinhard had worked for before he moved to Essen. Those Jews had gone to England. It was too bad we had not gone to England, although probably it didn’t matter. The German army would soon be there as well. She hoped Reinhard could keep us without getting into hot water.

We knew that she would have to go back to Bremen and report for her factory assignment. Production was more important now than studies; even Reinhard thought so. She planned to come back to see us in T. on her first
holiday in the summer unless, by then, the war was over. In that case, Reinhard should return to his old job in Essen. They would not need a manager with his experience in a place like T. after the Russians had been beaten. She wondered where we would be once he left. That was a puzzle to which we could never find an answer, and whenever we talked about it, I could see that Erika did not really have much hope of Reinhard keeping us or of our being in some way a part of the future.

Erika’s impending departure created another puzzle, which Reinhard and Tania apparently had not anticipated. After she left, how would he explain the evidence of life in her apartment? Even if all three of us were to move to his apartment, which he did not wish because it was too small, what was he to do about his Polish cleaning woman, the supplies of food out of scale with a bachelor’s existence, voices that might be overheard? There were long consultations between him and Tania, usually in their room, but sometimes also with grandmother, while Erika and I played gin rummy. I was reading
Treasure Island
in Polish. Long John Silver’s pursuit of Jim terrified me. It was bound to end badly. Erika didn’t know the story; Reinhard was the only person in her family who liked books. We decided I would read aloud to her, trying to translate into German. I could skip hard and boring passages. That gave Erika another opportunity to work on my German, about which Reinhard seemed to care more and more. The consultations stalled. Reinhard asked Erika to stay until he sorted things out. She was glad to do it if it was not too long. She was happy in T.; we were nicer than her real family, but she didn’t want trouble.

When they finally did sort things out, no one was happy. Once again, we were breaking the promise that we would stay together, but it had to be. Reinhard decided that he would keep grandmother with him in T. He would be less lonely that way, and she was so quiet and needed so much rest that her presence would not be noticed. He would simply forbid the cleaning woman to open the door to her room: military secrets inside it. You peek, you are shot. When the woman was gone, grandmother could do as she liked; they would have their evening meal together. She would make
zrazy
and
naleśniki
for him, and they would have private feasts. But Tania and I were going to Lwów, where he had an apartment ready for us. We would use the Aryan papers grandfather had gotten for us. It was better than going to Warsaw because, if we were so near, he could be with us at least once a week. We would have to be careful about going out because there were people in Lwów who might recognize Tania. From that point of view only, Warsaw was preferable. When grandmother felt better, and we had gotten used to Lwów, she would join us. It was all temporary and had to be done immediately while Erika was still there, and Erika had to be in Bremen in less than a week. We did as he said. Just as the Germans were losing the battle of Moscow, we said good-bye to grandmother and left for Lwów.