Wartime lies - Louis Begley [70]
All the while, fear like nausea was rising to my throat. What if the refugee in Bieda wasn’t grandfather? Where would we look for him? Would Tania be safe walking to Bieda? What would she do if she was stopped by a German patrol or if some peasant in his cart, seeing her on foot and alone, decided to rob her instead of letting her ride with him? Never, since Lwów, had she left me for a whole day or gone so far away from me. The boys in the pasture liked me, but they were not my friends. Only Stefa was my friend here, and perhaps Kulowa, but without Tania I was like a stray cat that anyone could stone. I decided to tell them about my father as well: I said I was sure he would return from the prisoner-of-war camp, in his officer’s uniform, to look for Tania and me as soon as the Germans left. He was a major; he would be wearing a pistol on his belt and perhaps a sword. The police would have to help in the search. He would not give up until he found us.
The wind was blowing harder. The cows became nervous; they stopped grazing and began to low and move about uneasily. Stefa said that if they were off their feed it was best to take them back, and that is what we did. I finished with the cows in the stable, but Tania still had not returned. Kulowa told me Kula was asleep; it served him right to be sick after all the vodka he had drunk; who did he think he was to be in his feather bed on a weekday? That scoundrel Tadek had also disappeared, busy vomiting somewhere. She was making cheese, pouring curdled milk into rectangular linen pouches. The whey had to be squeezed out carefully into a basin. Then the cheeses, in their pouches, were arranged on a board, covered by another board with a weight on it, and left to rest. I helped, holding the pouches for her. We tasted some of the moist, fresh cheese. We fed the poultry and the pigs, and I helped Kulowa milk the cows, putting hay into their mangers so they would keep quiet. Masia had also disappeared.
We ate the evening meal late, after Kula woke up. By then Tadek and Masia were also in the kitchen; only Tania wasn’t there. I told Kulowa I didn’t know where she was. The others didn’t ask; it seemed to me they didn’t mind being by themselves, with just their little cowherd keeping his mouth shut except to thank Kulowa for each piece of food. Then it was time for bed; Masia dragged in her bedding, I brought in Tania’s and mine, Kula said Tania must have found a softer mattress somewhere else, they snuffed out the lamp, and I was still alone.
TANIA woke me from a deep sleep. She was shivering from cold and sobbing terribly and kissing me. I kissed her too and stroked her hair and after a while she told me what had happened. Getting to Bieda had taken longer than she had expected. She must have walked two-thirds of the way before a peasant with a cart going in the right direction caught up with her. He was a quiet man with a good, fast horse; he refused to take money from her. When they got to Bieda, he showed her the house of the peasant who dealt in vodka and drove on. She had decided to start out by doing a little business and then casually asking questions about refugees from Warsaw or elsewhere who might be in the village. This peasant was very cautious. At first he wouldn’t talk about bimber at all, pretending he just sold regular vodka. He loosened up after she made it clear how well she knew Nowak, and they drank a glass of bimber together. All the while, she was telling him that she had many sources of supply and just wanted to know if he needed more bimber than he was getting from Nowak. He didn’t seem very interested, so she said that she regretted there was no business the two of them could do, but maybe, while she was in Bieda, she should see if there were any refugees who had jewelry to sell; she also dealt in that.
At that, the peasant laughed and said she had come too