Wartime lies - Louis Begley [74]
And is Maciek’s name again Maciek? Has the unmentionable Jewish family name been resumed? Certainly not; the visor was not lifted in Kielce; it will not be lifted in Cracow. Maciek has new Aryan papers and a new Polish surname with not a whiff of the Jew in it. Believe me, it is just as well. Tania and he had barely arrived in Cracow, with the plaster of Kielce cellars still in their lungs, the war just ended, when their new neighbors set about holding a pogrom, the first in liberated Poland. Not the old-fashioned kind, to be sure, with aged Jews in black caftans and round hats running around on all fours, youngsters astride their backs, giddy-up horse; you can’t find Hasidic Jews anymore. The behavior of our police was first-class: absolutely neutral, hands-off, yet how their fingers must have itched on the truncheon handles! Later in that week some Jews in Polish army uniforms, you wouldn’t call them soldiers, pushed and pummeled our boys—pure provocation—on the pretext our Polish boys had beat up Jews rocking and praying at their synagogue. Naturally there was a scuffle, and one or two Jews were sent to rest with Abraham still wearing their shawls. The next day every żydłak, every yid in Cracow was in the street parading with a huge sign; utterly shameless. Just like before the war—what do they care if they embarrass the Nation at a time when it needs all the help it can get from the West? Hitler didn’t teach them a thing. As for extermination, the Germans could no more get that job done than win the war. They had to leave it to us Poles to clean out the country, as though we had not suffered enough. For instance in Kielce, when the good people there, right behind Pani Dumont’s back, finally organized a pogrom—one year after the war ended—they still found more than forty Jews to kill! Can you imagine it?
Tania and Maciek have learned their lesson and do not march to protest pogroms. They have their new names and new lies, except that Tania has gone back to being a maiden aunt. Are these lies still useful? Is anyone taken in? You would not think so. After all, it’s true, there are Jews all over Cracow, crawling out from every hole. The worst are the ones just back from Russia, arrived with Russian troops, like lice on their uniforms, only they are again Pan Doctor this and Pan Engineer that, living in the same fancy apartments as before. Other Jews spent the war in comfort too, right among us, eating our food, usurping good Polish names, putting their neighbors in danger, because, of course, we all knew; one could tell those Jews at a glance even if they called themselves Sobieski. And please, how many of them did we keep in a back room for just a pittance, with them always complaining they had nothing left, as if money mattered when you turn into black smoke going up the chimney?
Yes, there are Jews in Cracow again, besides the ones who have returned from Russia: a few like Tania and Maciek who bought their life with a lie and a few who paid to be hidden and were not sold. Some of them have gone back to being called Rosenduft and Rozensztajn and think no one cares. But Tania and Maciek know better: Pan Twardowski and Pani Babińska care very much. These half-forgotten ghosts, with odious names and a look about them that’s not quite right, the time will come again and again to put them in their place, even if some people never seem to get it in their heads that they are not wanted. So, the wise Jew’s name still ends in “ski” or something like it, even if he isn’t fooling anyone who is truly sensitive. Perhaps the ladies with whom Tania has coffee and napoleon pastries in the afternoon are not precisely of Sarmatian