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By Root 352 0

did not pretend to be uninformed. She did not make scenes and she did not forgive. She was bitter, dignified and frequently sick. Her liver, kidneys and heart were fragile in ways that only my father fully understood. Toward Tania, she was moody and demanding. She did not wish Tania to forget that her having remained unmarried was a bitter disappointment. Secretly, however, Tania’s not finding a husband suited my grandmother: it meant she could devote her life to my father and me. Grandmother did not blame my father for my mother’s death and considered him the worthiest of husbands and fathers. She would have liked him to marry Tania, according to tradition, but could she wish such a fate for that good man? Tania was her father’s daughter, which in itself said plenty, and, to make matters worse, she was an intellectual, her mother thought. My grandmother was not very intelligent; intelligence, even if it was Tania’s, made her nervous.

My grandfather used our last days together to train me in two new pursuits: jumping over fires and throwing a jackknife. Zosia played an important part in the fire game. Under grandfather’s direction, she and I made piles of raspberry bush cuttings and dry flower stalks, carefully arranged in a straight line within a jump’s distance. My grandfather lit the piles: on his signal, Zosia and I, holding hands, would jump or run over them and collapse breathless in each other’s arms when we had finished. My grandfather waited till the flames were high. Then, having given me a hand salute, he would leap into flame after flame, emerging unscathed and triumphant.

We played with the jackknife sedately and alone. My grandfather wanted me to treat knives with the seriousness they deserved. He would draw a square in the dirt with the point and then small circles within the square. We stood a couple of paces away from the square, legs slightly apart and well balanced, and took turns throwing grandfather’s heavy, much-used jackknife so as to make it land upright as close as possible to the center of each circle.

I would jump over fires with my grandfather during three more autumns; the game resumed with other companions, after the Warsaw uprising, in the frozen fields of the Mazowsze. By then, violent death was stalking him. But in that golden fall of 1937, while grandmother saw to the packing of their trunks and fussed over the train schedule, I was his hope, the little man to whom he was teaching all his secrets, the heir to his farms and forests and broken dreams.

I BEGAN to eat better. My father said such improvement often followed a long fever. New tastes appealed to me. Grandmother made little toasts in the kitchen fireplace, holding the bread over the fire with long tongs. On the toast she put a duck or chicken liver grilled by the same method. When she and grandfather returned to Cracow, Zosia took over. She would laugh and feel me for fat, like a hen at the market, as she prepared the fourth or fifth liver of the morning. My father thought it best to have my progress verified. We went to Lwów, the nearest university city, to consult a lung specialist. He wore a beard, a pince-nez and a green eyeshade. When I asked him whether he liked me, which was then my opening conversational move with strangers, he begged Tania to remind me that children were not to be heard except when replying to a grown-up’s question. The professor’s stethoscope was very cold, the auscultation interminable; then Tania and I were asked to step into the waiting room while my father received his colleague’s opinion. He emerged from the consultation room radiant. According to the great man, my lungs were clear but I behaved like a spoiled girl. I should be in the fresh air as much as possible. It would make my head as clear as my lungs. In consequence, my father required that the daily schedule be changed. So long as the weather continued sunny and dry, I would go sledding with Zosia every morning. Reading, piano lessons and such like could wait until the afternoon. A season of enchantment began. On the other side of T.,