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By Root 12244 0

more even than her swollen and infected thumb. As usual she felt unclean, begrimed. With tired, gritty eyes she brooded out across the desolate cityscape, over which the sun never seemed to cast a glimmer. She yawned an exhausted yawn, no longer listening to Wanda’s voice, or rather, no longer hearing the actual words, which had become strident, singsong, hectoring, inspirational. She wondered where Jozef was, wondered if he was safe. She knew only that he was stalking someone in another part of the city, his piano wire in a lethal coil beneath his jacket—a boy of nineteen bent upon his mission of death and retribution. She was not in love with him but she, well—cared for him intensely; she liked the warmth of him in bed beside her, and she would be anxious until he returned. Mary Mother of God, she thought, what an existence! On the ugly street below—gray and grainy and featureless like the worn sole of a shoe—a platoon of German soldiers tramped into the gusty wind, the collars of their tunics blowing, rifles slung at the shoulder; listlessly she watched them pass the corner, turn, disappear up a street where but for an intervening bombed-out building she knew she could have seen the steel-and-iron curbside public gallows: it was as functional as a rack upon which secondhand dealers displayed used clothes, and from its horizontal bar citizens of Warsaw beyond counting had twisted and hung. And still hung and twisted. Christ, would it never end?

She was too weary to attempt even a bad joke, but it did occur to her, almost, to break in on Wanda, to reply to her by saying something that was outrageously lodged in her heart: The one and only thing which might lure me into your world would be that radio. Would be to listen to London. But not to war news. Not to news of Allied victories, nor word of the Polish army fighting, nor to orders from the government of Poland in exile. Not to any of these. No, quite simply I think I would risk my life as you do and also give an arm or a hand to listen just once again to Sir Thomas Beecham conducting Cosí fan tutte. What a shocking, selfish idea it was—she was aware of its infinite ignobility even as the thought crossed her mind—but she could not help it, it was what she felt.

For a moment shame washed over her for thinking the thought, shame at entertaining the notion in the same habitation where she shared room with Wanda and Jozef, these two selfless, courageous people whose allegiance to humanity and their fellow Poles and concern for the hunted Jews were a repudiation of all that her father had stood for. Despite her own actual blamelessness, she had felt dirtied, defiled by her association with her father in his last obsessed year, and with his atrocious pamphlet, and so her brief relationship with this consecrated sister and her brother had brought her moments of cleansing grace. She gave a small shudder and the fever of shame worsened, became hotter. What would they think if they knew about Professor Biegański, or knew that for three years she had carried on her person a copy of that pamphlet? And for what reason? For what unspeakable reason? To use it as a small wedge, an instrument of possible negotiation with the Nazis, should the loathsome occasion ever arise? Yes, she replied to herself, yes—there was no way out of that vile and disgraceful fact. And now as Wanda rambled on about duty and sacrifice she became so troubled by her secret that simply to save her composure she thrust it from her mind like some foul leaving. She listened again.

“There comes a point in life where every human being must stand up and be counted,” Wanda was saying. “You know what a beautiful person I think you are. And Jozef would die for you!” Her voice rose, now began to scrape her raw. “But you can no longer treat us this way. You have to assume responsibility, Zosia. You’ve come to the place where you can no longer fool around like this, you have to make a choice!”

Just then on the street below she caught sight of her children. They moved slowly up the sidewalk, talking earnestly, dallying