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By Root 370 0

will not do, she told me, always to be trying to make oneself liked and then to ask whether one has succeeded. She wished me to endeavor, quietly and modestly, to deserve being liked. Our model compositions were on themes from Polish revolutionary history or, because we were reading Sieńkiewicz, the long Polish struggle against Ukrainian invaders. Pan Wołodyjowski, the diminutive saber wizard, always hopelessly in love, always victorious in a duel, replaced Old Shatterhand as the hero of my daydreams, at least when I was not the colonel of my Wehrmacht lead soldier regiment. At the same time, my lead army was undergoing a degree of reorganization. There was no question that the German soldiers we saw in Warsaw were winners, but was that the reality? We were listening to BBC broadcasts with the other lodgers and when we went to see my grandfather. That was another activity punishable by death. In Smolensk, on the Dnieper, in Kiev, the Russians were beating the Germans; perhaps Stalingrad was not simply a case of von Paulus’s incompetence or treachery. I began to move some of my better regiments over to the Russian side. Pani Bronicka intensified our geography lessons. She too listened to the BBC. She brought a globe to make me understand that it was not just the Russian front that counted. We were to have no illusions, the Reich was terribly strong and dangerous, but one could see thick, heavy arrows sticking deep in its flanks; the Reich would fall, like a wild boar.

Meanwhile, I was breaking Pani Bronicka’s heart. She wrote down my assignments in pencil in a little notebook she had given me. I would erase the page numbers and set myself lighter tasks. After a week or two she caught me: she had recorded the assignment in her own notebook as well. She said it was her duty to tell my mother. I pleaded with her, promising to make up the omitted pages; she relented. I was desperately afraid of Tania. She hated cheating, except to avoid capture; she would sense danger in the effect on Pani Dumont and the other lodgers if my behavior became known. They were all taking an interest in my progress. Pan Władek, who was a chemist, was helping me with arithmetic. But almost immediately after Pani Bronicka forgave me I began to change my assignments again, in exactly the same way. I even cut some pages out of the notebook with a razor blade. This time Tania was informed; my soldiers were confiscated and put in Pani Bronicka’s custody until further notice, Tania having somehow propitiated her to the point of agreeing to continue to teach me.

When we were alone, Tania said scornfully that if it was my nature to be a cheat it was too bad that I was not at least original and clever at it. My disgrace was too profound, and Pani Bronicka too visibly upset, for Tania not to tell Pani Dumont. At the evening meal, my case was discussed, the lodgers offering varying assessments of my guilt. Pan Władek’s was the worst: he thought that, considering the help I had gotten from him, I was not just lazy, I was evil. He was laughing, rocking back in his chair. I punched him, in his hollow chest, with all my force. The blow threw him against the wall. He coughed; his glasses fell off his nose. It occurred to me that I had done this terrible thing not because of what he had said to me, but because he had put me to shame before Tania. But I was not altogether like Pan Wołodyjowski; I was afraid. I got down on one knee and asked Pan Władek’s forgiveness. He said I was not to worry; it was his fault. He had been wrong to tease me when I was unhappy.

THE woman at grandfather’s apartment, Pani Basia, was definitely Jewish. Right after our first visit, Tania said she must really be Pani Sara. Her son’s name was Henryk; he was younger than I, as grandfather had supposed. I thought he was also more stupid, he was not taking lessons from a tutor, and Pani Basia didn’t work with him regularly. His collection of lead soldiers was good, better than mine. Before my soldiers were taken away, I brought them with me on my visits. Later, he shared his with me.

We