Wartime lies - Louis Begley [14]
Bern told us that he had learned on the telephone from a colleague in Lwów that the Kommandantur there had given the Jewish community office orders to move all the Jews into a ghetto, like the ones in Warsaw and Cracow. It was no laughing matter. People would have to live squeezed together like sardines. It would make us think the new lodgings we shared with these very decent Kramers were luxuriously spacious. He hoped it would not come to that in T. We already had the armbands, the yellow star and the curfew. If the Jewish community office acted responsibly, and our dear café intellectuals for once avoided provoking the Poles, perhaps we could remain as we were. This way of talking was new, and Tania and my grandfather teased Bern about it, saying he was using very modern Polish. We had always referred to Poles who were Catholics simply as Catholics, because after all we too thought we were Poles. But the mention of the curfew made them remember the hour; it was time for Bern to leave. Tania went out with him, saying she would accompany him as far as the corner.
When Tania returned, grandmother said she was glad she was sick and would not live long anyway. She had been one of four sisters; people said they were all good-looking; now only she was left. When she was a young girl, she could have everything she wanted. Then when her father lost his money, my grandfather performed the only good action of his life: he paid his father-in-law’s debts. The two real children she had were dead; Tania had never been her child. Now my grandfather could be proud of how she had turned out. Just like his women. This was enough misfortune in one life, and yet she didn’t mind the hovel we were in, or wearing a star or an armband, or being beaten or shot like those poor Kippers. When she was ten, she had seen a pogrom. Ukrainian peasants pulled beautiful Jewish men by their beards, violated young girls, beat everybody. Thank God, they had not come into their house, but she had seen and heard. She didn’t think Germans could do worse. But never, in all that time, or anytime until now, had she heard anyone talk as shamelessly as Bern. My grandfather remained silent. Tania looked very tired and very calm. After a while, she turned to my grandmother and said, You don’t know yet what is shameless, you don’t know yet what we will do, just wait, you will see before you die.
A short time later, Bern got a job for Tania in the Wehrmacht supply depot. They needed someone who could speak and write German perfectly and also do some typing, and finally told the Jewish community office to supply such a person. There did not seem to be any qualified Aryans in T. This development made our situation very much better—we had become the dependents of an essential worker—but it left me very much alone. Grandmother was sicker than usual, and grandfather had to take care of her. Because everything was rationed, he spent a good part of the day buying provisions in the regular stores, where one had to wait in lines, and also pursuing his private connections through which he could get good milk and eggs and sometimes calves’ liver. Grandmother had a liver ailment; it was recommended that she eat only lean food, and calves’ liver