miracle that we had survived.
Of course, before our escape, everyone had told Mother that she was crazy. Yes, people had escaped that way, but they had been strong men, not women with children, and it had been before the mountains were covered with snow. But Mother had just laughed at them, as though they were saying silly things.
That escape was what Mother’s book was going to be about, along with stories about how brutally the Germans treated people in the part of Poland that they occupied. We couldn’t talk about the book while we were still in Europe because the Germans, who had spies everywhere, didn’t want Mother getting to America, which wasn’t in the war, and writing her book. But right now, we were very poor.
Not because she expected to need them, but because of the falling bombs, Mother had wrapped up all of her jewelry in a blue pillowcase when we left Warsaw, and packed them in one of the suitcases we brought with us. We had not expected to be gone long, since Poland had a mutual defense treaty with Britain and France, and the two of them would surely push the Germans back into Germany in a matter of weeks. But that hadn’t happened, and Mother had had to start selling off her jewelry for us to live on and to get from one place to another. The guide who was supposed to lead us across the Carpathians had been paid from the proceeds of the sale of some of that jewelry, and Mother had sewn the rest into the lining and buttons of our clothes before our mountain adventure.
But travel through Europe on a Polish passport was both hazardous and expensive in nineteen forty, and our often urgent financial needs made it a definite buyer’s market in diamonds. Our supply of precious stones was being quickly depleted. Our challenge at this point was to reach America, where Mother could sell our story to a publisher, before the supply of jewels ran out altogether.
Not only did I understand all this very well, but I must have actually understood it somewhat better than Mother, because in Lisbon she had gone out and bought a new bathing suit and three new outfits, including a long evening gown, that she said were just for the ship, which would only be a two-week trip. All I had gotten for the trip, and all I needed, was a bathing suit, and I could have even done without that, and just worn my brown shorts. She had said that it was important for her to look nice, but she didn’t really need new clothes to look nice. Nor did she need to go to a hairdresser in order to have her hair washed, since you could buy shampoo at a pharmacy. I understood that women were more concerned about their looks than men, but we were running very short on finances, and who knew how long we would have to wait for our turn in the Polish quota for immigrating to America.
Of course, I also understood about temptation. I knew what it was to see something in a store window that you wanted to have. I, of course, had never had the opportunity to just walk into the store and buy what I wanted, but for somebody who did, I could well see how that might be hard to resist. And my mother just didn’t seem very good at resisting that kind of temptation. Mother could only speak a few words of Portuguese, which was what they spoke in Brazil, and she couldn’t type or cook or drive a car or even sew—I could sew buttons on better than she could—so I didn’t see any way for more money to be coming in until we got to America and she got to write her book. So it might well be up to me to make sure that our funds lasted for as long as it took to get to America.
“He’s very sickly,” I heard Mother saying to M. Gordet, as he helped her to climb down from the swimming pool on the ladder that was nailed to the side. Mother had on open-backed shoes on very high wedge heels and I could tell she was going to have trouble. Of course, I also knew she was talking about me again, and I dearly hoped she wasn’t going to tell him about the problem with my