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By Root 12535 0

wish that my wife or children expressed was granted them. The children could live a free and untrammeled life. My wife’s garden was a paradise of flowers. The prisoners never missed an opportunity for doing some little act of kindness to my wife or children, and thus attracting their attention. No former prisoner can ever say that he was in any way or at any time badly treated in our house. My wife’s greatest pleasure would have been to give a present to every prisoner who was in any way connected with our household. The children were perpetually begging me for cigarettes for the prisoners. They were particularly fond of the ones who worked in the garden. My whole family displayed an intense love of agriculture and particularly for animals of all sorts. Every Sunday I had to walk them all across the fields and visit the stables, and we must never overlook the kennels where the dogs were kept. Our two horses and the foal were especially beloved. The children always kept animals in the garden, creatures the prisoners were forever bringing them. Tortoises, martens, cats, lizards: there was always something new and interesting to be seen there. In the summer they splashed in the paddling pool in the garden, or in the Sola River. But their greatest joy was when Daddy bathed with them. He had, however, so little time for these childish pleasures...”

It was into this enchanted bower that Sophie was to stray during the early fall of 1943, at a time when by night the billowing flames from the Birkenau crematoriums blazed so intensely that the regional German military command, situated one hundred kilometers away near Cracow, grew apprehensive lest the fires attract enemy air forays, and when by day a bluish veil of burning human flesh beclouded the golden autumnal sunlight, sifting out over garden and paddling pool and orchard and stable and hedgerow its sickish sweet, inescapably pervasive charnelhouse mist. I do not recall Sophie’s telling me about ever being the recipient of a present from Frau Höss, but it confirms one’s belief in the basic truthfulness of Höss’s account to know that during Sophie’s brief stay under the Commandant’s roof she, like the other prisoners, just as he claimed, was never in any way or at any time badly treated. Although even this in the end, as it turned out, was not so much really to be thankful for.

Chapter Seven

“SO MAYBE YOU can see, Stingo,” Sophie told me that first day in the park, “how Nathan saved my life. It was fantastic! Here I was, very ill, fainting, falling down, and along comes—how do you call him?—Prince Charming, and he save my life. And it was so easy, you see, like magic, as if he had a magic wand and he wave it over me, and very soon I am all well.”

“How long did it take?” I said. “Between the time...”

“You mean after that day when he found me? Oh, hardly any time at all, really. Two weeks, three weeks, something like that. Allez! Go away!” She skipped a small stone at the largest and most aggressive swan invading our picnic ground on the lake. “Go away! I hate that one, don’t you? Un vrai gonif. Come here, Tadeusz.” She made little clucking sounds at her disheveled favorite, enticing him with the remnants of a bagel. Hesitantly, the outcast waddled forward with blowzy feathers and a forlorn lopsided glance, pecking at the crumbs as she spoke. I listened intently even though I had other concerns in the offing. Perhaps because my coming assignation with the divine Lapidus had caused me to oscillate between rapture and apprehension, I tried to quell both emotions by drinking several cans of beer—thus violating my self-imposed rule about alcohol during daylight or working hours. But I needed something to stifle my monumental anticipation and to slow my galloping pulse.

I consulted my wristwatch, to discover with sickening suspense that only six hours must pass before I would be tapping at Leslie’s door. Clouds like creamy blobs, iridescent Disneyesque confections, moved serenely toward the ocean, sending dappled patterns of light and shade across our grassy little promontory