Wartime lies - Louis Begley [33]
We were ready; there was nothing more that Tania or Hertz thought we should do. Hertz offered to get our tickets and give them to Tania at the entrance to the platform. That cut down the time we would need to spend at the station. At his suggestion, we were going to take the night train; Hertz said even the Gestapo had to sleep. There was nothing left to do except wait for the afternoon to end. Tania and I sat in the kitchen, in the bleary March light, and played twenty-one for matches. Suddenly Tania stood up, drew in her breath, and pointed out the window to the stairs. Walking up were two Gestapo men in uniform and a third man in a belted civilian coat but wearing black britches and high black boots like the others. Tania put her fingers to her lips and in a whisper told me to hurry to the bedroom, leave the door open, and hide behind the door. I was to listen carefully. If they were taking her away or if they were going toward the bedroom and she shrieked, I should immediately take the cyanide. Keep it in your hand, she said, and keep your hand in your pants pocket.
It took what seemed like a long time before they reached our apartment. I listened to their knocking on other doors off the balcony and to muffled conversations. At last, they knocked on the door to our kitchen. From where I was standing I could hear very well. They were checking Tania’s papers, looking around the kitchen. They spoke no Polish; she answered them in brash, broken German, using the familiar du. She told them they had startled her; she was deep in her game of solitaire. The man in civilian clothes said they wanted a woman with a little boy. The woman had long hair, down to the shoulders. They showed Tania a photograph. They knew the woman and child lived in the building; the landlady had reported their presence to the Polish police. Tania said they should have come sooner. There was such a woman in the next apartment, where they had knocked without getting an answer. She and the boy moved in months ago. But they both went out; she had seen them on the balcony.
There followed some talk among the men I could not make out, and the civilian asked to see Tania’s papers again. This time they looked at them longer, and asked her to come into the light at the door so they could compare her to the photograph they had with them and the photograph in her Kennkarte. The civilian asked whether she had a young boy or anyone else living in the apartment. Tania laughed the long laugh she used when she teased people who weren’t her friends and said they could look through her small apartment if they were curious. In fact, she was too busy with grown men to have little boys around, and except for the three of them, she was alone. But not for long, a friend was coming; a man, not a woman or a little boy, and he didn’t have long hair. If they wished to wait they could see for themselves. The Germans also laughed and said they might indeed come back to surprise her when she was not expecting company. They talked a moment longer, and then I knew they were leaving: the door slammed; there were heavy steps on the balcony and soon on the stairs, going down.
Tania remained in the kitchen until they could no longer be heard. I had not moved from my place behind the bedroom door; the vial was still in my hand. Then suddenly she rushed into the room and said, Hurry, we are getting out of this house. They will come back to look for the woman in the apartment next door, they will talk to the landlady, and if that slut is at home she will get her chance to turn us in.
IV
TANIA and I arrived in Warsaw, with our money and jewelry still safely adhering to our bodies, on the morning of March 30, 1943. While we slept heavily in a railroad compartment crammed with passengers and bundles, fear mixed with fatigue being the strongest of soporifics, RAF bombs for the second time in three days kept awake the population of Berlin. Later that morning, as we looked