Sophie's Choice - William Styron [307]
“We were finishing this very poor meal, I remember—beans and turnip soup and a kind of joke sausage. We had been talking about all the music we’d missed hearing. I had delayed all during the dinner to say what I really wanted, then I finally got the courage, saying, ’Wanda, did you ever hear the name Biegański? Zbigniew Biegański?’
“Wanda’s eyes looked vacant for a moment. ‘Oh yes, you mean the Fascist professor from Cracow. He was well known for a while before the war. He made hysterical speeches here in the city against the Jews. I had forgotten all about him. I wonder what ever happened to him. He’s probably working for the Germans.’
“ ‘He’s dead,’ I said. ‘He was my father.’
“I could see Wanda shiver. It was so cold outside and inside. There was this spitting sound of sleet against the window. The children were in bed in the next room. I’d put them there because I’d run out of fuel, coal or wood, in my own apartment downstairs, and Wanda had at least a big comforter on the bed to keep them warm. I kept looking at Wanda, but there was no emotion on her face. She said after a bit, ‘So he was your father. It must have been strange to have had such a man for a father. What was he like?’
“I was surprised at this reaction, she seemed to take it so calmly, so naturally. I mean, of all the people in the Resistance in Warsaw, she was the one who maybe done the most to help the Jews—or to try to help the Jews, it was so difficult. I suppose you could call it her specialty, trying to get aid to the ghetto. She felt, too, that anyone who betrayed the Jews, or a single Jew, was betraying Poland. It was Wanda who started Jozef on this way of murdering Poles who betrayed Jews. She was so militant about this, so dedicated, a socialist. But she didn’t seem to be at all shocked or anything that my father had been who he had been, and she obviously didn’t feel that I was—well, contaminated. I said, ‘I find it very difficult to talk about him.’ And she said back to me very gently, ‘Well, don’t, dear heart. I don’t care who your father was. You can’t be blamed for his miserable sins.’
“Then I said, ‘It’s so strange, you know. He was killed by the Germans inside the Reich. At Sachsenhausen.’
“But even this—well, even this irony didn’t seem to impress her. She just blinked and ran her hand through her hair. Her hair was red and wispy, with no gleam in it at all—so drab and wispy because of the bad food. She just said, ‘He must have been one of those faculty members at the Jagiellonian who caught it right after the occupation began.’
“I said, ‘Yes, and my husband too. I never told you about that. He was a disciple of my father’s. I hated him. I’ve lied to you. I hope you’ll forgive me for once telling you that he died fighting during the invasion.’
“And I started to finish what I was saying—this apology—but Wanda cut me off. She lit a cigarette, I remember she smoked like a fiend whenever she could get cigarettes. And she said, ‘Zosia sweetheart, it don’t matter. For God’s sake, do you think I care what they were? It’s you that matters. Your husband could have been a gorilla and your father Joseph Goebbels and you’d still be my dearest friend.’ She went to the window then and pulled down the blind. She only did this when there was some danger coming. The apartment was five floors