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By Root 350 0

not unlike a table, fired by coal. Getting it started properly with kindling, creating zones of differing degrees of heat, and then keeping the fire going from breakfast through the day were skills cooks were proud of. Tania had asked the cook in T. to teach her before the servants were let go. Now she taught me in turn. I loved lighting the stove and preparing our coffee, which was real, not ersatz. I would set the milk on the cooler part of the plaque, so that it would not boil over; cleaning burnt milk from the iron stove top to Tania’s satisfaction was not easy. I also had a hot area, on which I made toast. My special invention, of which Tania approved, was soft-boiled eggs cooked without a timer. I discovered that the equivalent of a four-minute egg could be produced, without failure, by putting eggs into cold water, bringing the water to a boil and withdrawing the eggs immediately. Tania liked breakfast in bed. When Reinhard wasn’t there, I would get it all ready and arrange it on a tray large enough for two. We would then eat it in her bed, side by side.

I was about to take the milk off the fire when I saw, making his way with great speed down to the kindling box beside the stove, a huge spider, suspended by the thread it was producing. It was the largest I had seen, with knobbly legs he kept folding and unfolding. I had a dish towel in my hand to grasp the milk pan, but instead I reached for the spider with it. He scurried up to get out of my way, but I was faster. I squashed him against the wall. When I took the towel away, I saw that I had made a black-and-red spot. Also, the milk had boiled over and was spreading across the stove. I quickly rescued the pan, refilled it, and was beginning to clean up when Tania came into the kitchen. She had smelled the burnt milk and asked how her chef had gotten into such trouble. Her face was fresh and pink from bed; she put her arms around me. I told her about the spider. She looked at the stain and said very quietly that it was too bad, seeing a spider on Friday was bad luck; killing the spider made bad luck certain.

For my birthday Reinhard had given me a set for making lead soldiers. It consisted of three split iron molds—one for foot soldiers, one for cavalrymen and one for horses—a little pan with a beak for melting lead, and paints and brushes. I would set up the molds on the kitchen table, melt the lead on the stove, pour it into the molds and then quickly plunge the blocks into a pan of cold water. After a few minutes, I could open the molds, and the soldiers or horses would be ready to paint. I used the set to make soldiers from new lead and also to recast broken or worn-out men. After breakfast, I decided to cast a whole new regiment that I would paint white, as camouflage for fighting in the snow. When Reinhard arrived the next day, we would set up the battle at Stalingrad. I had so many lead soldiers now that I could field both armies; before I had used cardboard cutouts for the Russians and the English. Lead soldiers made the battlefield clearer. The field gun Reinhard had also given me worked better against them. It had a spring that pulled back and shot dry peas hard enough to knock over a whole row of soldiers.

The weather was very beautiful that day, sunny with no autumn frost yet in the air. Tania came home from shopping and said it was a pity not to go for a walk until the evening, but we should not break rules. The nicer the day, the more people would be out who might recognize us. But she would go out alone to pass by the post office; she wanted to see if the envelope was gone. She returned perplexed: it was still there.

On our evening walk, we went first to the post office. This time, the envelope was gone. Tania said she was puzzled by her own curiosity; of course, Hertz took the money and couldn’t be expected to leave a thank-you note. We walked longer than usual, more slowly than usual, really looking at shop windows, and not just pretending so that Tania could study the street behind us. Tania said that probably this was the period of Jewish holidays;