Wartime Lies Read Free Page A

pile it over my face. Her hair was very thick. It smelled slightly of soap. Zosia’s own smell was a mixture of soap and fresh sweat; she teased me because I seldom sweated and would show me how wet her armpits became after our garden races. If I could not keep my promise, I told her. Zosia would sigh and kiss me, and sigh again or laugh. She would tell me I was her own cretin monster, her own nightmare, and let me bargain with her for more songs or caresses. If I chose caresses, I could touch her neck and ears. Then she would put her hands under my pajamas and stroke my chest, my stomach and my legs until I finally fell asleep, all the while sighing and laughing because I was so thin and because I was so ticklish and because I loved her too much.
    My father had grown very concerned about the nightly apparitions. Was I hearing the Erlkönig’s melodious blandishments? We decided that we should search for the giant and confront him. Together, we loaded the Browningpistol my father kept in his locked desk drawer. He showed me how to put a bullet in the chamber. So armed, we visited each room in the house. The wardrobes were opened; we poked behind coats and dresses and turned the linen in the drawers upside down. The smell of mothballs made us sneeze. There was no telling what shape the giant took in the day and where he might roost. To inspect the tenants’ wing seemed too embarrassing; besides, it would not do to frighten them as well—our situation was already difficult. There remained only the cellar, with its barrels of pickles and sauerkraut, bins of potatoes and beets, and huge, empty leather trunks. These we examined one by one, I shining the flashlight, my father with his gun at the ready. Tania, who had declared at the start that we would find nothing, remained in the garden and read. Once again, she was right; in the day, the giant was invisible. My father felt my forehead and asked Zosia to keep me very quiet. It was the beginning of the fever that in a few days turned into whooping cough.
    S INCE my birth, the Jewish holidays were the occasion of my maternal grandparents’ annual visit to T. This autumn the holidays fell very early. My grandparents had not yet returned to Cracow for the winter from their property near S., a town to the north of T. Metternich once spent a night in S.; in his memoirs it is recorded that his enjoyment of the admirable natural beauty of the site and the surrounding countryside was spoiled by the large number of Jews living there. To relieve Tania of some of her responsibilities and to spend more time with me, they decidedto come to us directly from the country, although my father had assured them I was not in danger. I was allowed to get up from bed to welcome them at the door. They arrived in their old, broad, open carriage. The coachman, who was my friend, was on the box. A wagon pulled by two horses followed with their luggage. As we had no stable, the horses would return to S., which made me cry with disappointment. My grandfather, rubbing his mustache against my face, patting me on the back, and crying a little himself, said that a man like me really needed his own carriage, that Jan would bring the horses back as soon as I was well enough to keep them busy going out every day; if I liked, I could even learn to drive the carriage myself.
    Very tall, very straight, always dressed in black, with a mustache that was still black and white hair cut short in the “porcupine” style then favored by Polish gentry, my grandfather had a way of opening a world of infinite possibilities. His daughter Tania was his favorite; in her eyes, he was the paragon of men. On a word from him, she would bend consecrated rules governing my schedule and manners. As for my cautious, methodical and tender father, in his heart of hearts he thought of his father-in-law as a sort of benevolent centaur. In fact, the old gentleman was happier in the saddle than on the ground. Fondness for the myth (it was