Wartime lies - Louis Begley [9]
Tania and my father were gratified by the results: I looked sturdier and I was growing. I stopped talking about the giant and after one story from Tania was prepared to say good-night and close my eyes. Exercise and good food alone were not responsible for this particular improvement. Since my fever fell, and my father no longer thought it necessary to look in on me in the night to listen to my breathing, Zosia had told me that I could sleep in her bed. She was sure that no giant would think of looking for me there. Therefore, as soon as Tania had given me the last of her sleep-well kisses, I would tiptoe into Zosia’s room. She would be laughing or growling giant noises until I slipped under her huge goose feather bed. Our old agreements still held: I could play with her hair and touch her on the face and on the neck. I could also put my arms around her, and she would caress me until I fell asleep. Then if I thought the giant might come, I would quickly awaken her. She would be all warm and wet from sleep, often her nightshirt had worked its way up, and when she pressed me against her I felt her naked legs, her stomach. She would talk to me very softly: giants and mean dwarfs were cowards. They might pick on a little boy all alone. But I was a big boy now, and, with her, I would never be alone. I would tell her I was still afraid and tug at her shirt so that as much of me as possible was right next to her, inside her smell and warmth. She would laugh. I was a little rascal and had to learn to behave, but in the meantime she would tickle me until I was quite sure the giant was not coming that night, and this worked so well that she agreed that, from then on, as soon as I came into her bed, she would pull up her shirt or let me creep under it, and I could touch her as much as I wished if I promised never, never to tickle her, even though she could tickle me as much as she liked. We honored this pact. Often, after she had fallen asleep, I stayed very quiet, with my eyes closed, and passed my hands over her breasts and her stomach. Her naked buttocks were pressed against my legs. My heart beat very fast; then I too would fall asleep. And, though the fear is still vivid in my memory when I think of the door to my father’s study and the porcelain stove beside it, the giant has never returned in my dreams again.
THE next March the Anschluss took place. My father listened to the BBC news explaining names and places. The fabric of his youth was unraveling. Hitler on Kärntner-strasse! Paradoxically, my father canceled the cruise that was to have taken Tania, him and me to the Mediterranean that summer. He said it was no time to be so far from home. Tania and he argued. She told him it was precisely the time to leave Poland, while it was still possible; there was talk that one could get visas for Australia and Brazil. My father said that was all right for the grandparents and her; they could even have me with them for a while, and I could return to T. when everybody felt calm again. But his place, his duty, were in Poland. Tania said he was a fool. How could he imagine my grandfather in Australia at the head of the family? If we were going abroad we needed him.
My father’s uniforms were taken out of the storage wardrobe. He inspected them and had two pairs of britches taken in—the diet he had been following for kidney stones made him lose weight. He and Tania