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Auschwitz?” I asked.
    She admitted it with a dolorous nod. “Oh, dear sir, I was. It was an accident. They sent our train the wrong way. When one of the girls reached up to the window of the cattle truck to break off ice, she saw the sun was in the wrong place for us to be going south to Schindler’s camp. We were going west.
Owicim.
Auschwitz. It broke our hearts!”
    Freddy, the good son, said, “But Oskar got you out, Ma.”
    Poldek said, “Oskar sent this
bee-ourt-ee-ful Volksdeutsch
secretary off as a bribe to the SS.”
    “Poldek,” Misia chided. “That’s just what some people say…”
    ¸
    “Darling Misia, Pemper told me!”
    “Well, somehow…I don’t know…he got us out.”
    Just the same, one could tell she had her ideas about it.
    “The best journey of my life,” she said. “Out of Auschwitz. Half of us with scarlet fever or the typhus. And we turned up at Brinnlitz at dawn, a freezing day, and we see Oskar standing in the courtyard of the factory in a little hat…a…Poldek, help me.”
    “In one of those Tyrolean hats, you know, with the feather on the side.”
    “Yes, a Tyrolean hat. There were SS all about, but we had eyes just for him. He was beautiful. And he told us there was soup.”
    “Otherwise,” said Freddy, “
I
wouldn’t be here, would I, Ma?”
    “Exactly right, Freddy darlink.”
    Misia had, like her husband and many Polish-Jewish characters, the tendency to put a
k
on the end of darling. Who was I to talk? My Irish granny, Katie Keneally, had been unable to pronounce a
th
and spoke of
t’roat
(throat) and
cat’edrals
. As for Australians, as a friend would say, our five vowels were
i
,
i
,
i
,
i
and
u
. So Mrs. Misia Page’s verbal mannerism had no low-humor effect on me, emerging as it did from the mouth of a woman who had seen the great necro-manufactory of Auschwitz.
    Poldek said, “And I wouldn’t have had my darling Misia. She is so cute this lady. Too clever for me. She was meant to be a surgeon.”
    “I’m a surgeon on handbags now,” she reasoned. “And I love it here. Beverly Hills people—some are huffy, you know—but mostly so nice. Excuse me, sir, a second.” She moved to Poldek and muttered a few words to him, about problems with a Mrs. Gerschler’s handbag and how Poldek might have to replace the whole thing.
    “She’s got other handbags,” Poldek rumbled.
    “No, Poldek,” Misia said softly. “The poor woman has to take the bag she wants to take. She’s been a customer twenty years.”
    “I suffered every one of them, ai! Si Gerschler…such a nice guy married to that shiksa. Tell her, I’m trying to get a replacement one out of the manufacturers. It’s on the way.”
    “Poldek, how can she wear it to the Century City Plaza tonight if it’s in a boat somewhere?” asked small-boned Misia, descending into her own guttural range. “I called Mason’s wholesale. They have one in stock. They’re sending it over to us.”
    “Misia, darling, that’s so expensive and a big write-down.”
    “We don’t have a choice, Poldek.”
    Misia turned to me and said, “Forgive me. Business, you see.” But now it had obviously been settled in the well-practiced way they had.
    “Come and see, Thomas, if I may call you,” Poldek boomed. “Come and see what I have here.”
    He led me toward two filing cabinets that stood by the desk at the back of the storeroom, and as he went he settled at top voice with Misia and Freddy the issue of a Bel Air woman’s handbag and who would deliver it. Poldek was brought to a pause by the crisis and stopped walking. He sounded bearishly reasonable. “Misia, I have the gentleman here. He’s a very famous writer. In
Newsweek
I see his review. If you can call Mason’s and get them to deliver it straight to—”
    “Poldek, they only deliver retail. You know that. Where’s Sol?”
    “Sol’s on the phone with some MasterCard nebbish. Besides, he’s a lousy driver.”
    “I’ll get it there, Pop,” said