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guns. Some of the men went out to look. They said there were soldiers running and shooting at one another in the street; a tank was stopped at the corner, its cannon firing shell after shell. Was it German or Russian? Tania had a bottle of water. She gave me little sips from it. I fell asleep in her lap. An enormous explosion awakened me. The cellar was now full of dust, a part of the ceiling had collapsed, someone was shining a flashlight at the cracks spreading from the hole. The house had been hit. Then there was another, stronger bang and cries for help. The door to the cellar had disappeared in a torrent of crumbling bricks. We were buried. The old woman who had cried out was being helped out from under the stones. Her head and legs were bleeding. Tania stood up and said loud enough to be heard over the din that everybody should try to keep calm, she knew how to clean and bandage wounds. When she finished, and the old woman was just whimpering quietly, somebody asked, Why doesn’t this Pani lead us in prayer? So Tania began to sing. She sang the most holy of Polish hymns to the Virgin. We all sang with her, begging the Mother of God to bring us a time of goodness.

Late the next day, the guns fell silent. There were some shovels in the cellar. The men dug a passage to the outside. We climbed out into a street where other figures like us were moving about: gray human-sized insects. It was snowing. We learned we were in a no-man’s-land. The Russians had overrun Kielce, then the Germans had pushed them back, and now the Germans were gone or were lying low, but the Russians had not returned. It would all begin again. Tania and I followed some others from our cellar. They were looking for shelter in a building two or three stories high that had not been hit and where they would know somebody. Finally, they found such a place. After much beating on the gate, it was opened. Those inside recognized the people we were with and agreed to let us come into their cellar. They said that the entrance was barricaded against the Russians; when Russians attacked, drunk Tartar battalions were always in the first wave, sent on purpose to kill, torture and rape. We would regret the Germans.

I still had my quilt with me. We settled down on it near a wall. Tania asked for some water. We were handed a bucket; she filled her bottle and began to wash my face. Then, in this dimly lit place, a familiar, kind voice was speaking to us, insistently, calling Tania and me by name. I recognized before us the portly figure of Pani Dumont, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, a little disheveled, but otherwise unmistakably herself. The cellar was in her family’s building; her Belgian passport had saved her in Warsaw from the deportation train; she had managed to get to Kielce. When she had finished kissing Tania and me and we had hugged her to her heart’s content, the necessary introductions were performed. Then she fed us, and I finally went to sleep. Hours of bombardment and gunfire followed, the cellar trembled, and once again outside there was silence. Some men went out to reconnoiter: the Russians were everywhere in Kielce; they seemed to be ordinary troops; there were no Asiatic faces in sight.

Pani Dumont, Tania and I came out of the cellar into a blinding January morning. It was no longer snowing. In the street, there were Russian army trucks and armored cars. Soldiers in felt boots lounging near them waved at us cheerfully, offering bread and big lumps of sugar. Pani Dumont was weeping, she said from happiness. All that time in Warsaw she had prayed for us and for Pan Władek, and with God’s help, now she knew that at least Tania and I were saved.

VIII

Raz dwa, raz dwa, one two, one two, turn right, turn left, cross hands with your partner, head high, all wheel, Maciek is dancing the krakowiak. He is wearing brown tweed knickers and brown argyle socks, his matching tweed coat has a little belt on the back, in the best postwar fashion. It’s all a bit too new and uncomfortable. The tummy has grown bigger and rounder again: with the