Wartime Lies by Louis Begley

her small apartment if they were curious. In fact, she was too busy with grown men to have little boys around, and except for the three of them, she was alone. But not for long, a friend was coming; a man, not a woman or a little boy, and he didn’t have long hair. If they wished to wait they could see for themselves. The Germans also laughed and said they might indeed come back to surprise her when she was not expecting company. They talked a moment longer, and then I knew they were leaving: the door slammed; there were heavy steps on the balcony and soon on the stairs, going down.
    Tania remained in the kitchen until they could no longer be heard. I had not moved from my place behind the bedroom door; the vial was still in my hand. Thensuddenly she rushed into the room and said, Hurry, we are getting out of this house. They will come back to look for the woman in the apartment next door, they will talk to the landlady, and if that slut is at home she will get her chance to turn us in.

IV

    T ANIA and I arrived in Warsaw, with our money and jewelry still safely adhering to our bodies, on the morning of March 30, 1943. While we slept heavily in a railroad compartment crammed with passengers and bundles, fear mixed with fatigue being the strongest of soporifics, RAF bombs for the second time in three days kept awake the population of Berlin. Later that morning, as we looked for the rooming house near the Central Station that Hertz had recommended, Berliners leaving air-raid shelters and resuming their lives in familiar neighborhoods could discern the face of their city-to-be in bomb craters and behind blackened facades of their houses.
    There was a unifying theme in Hertz’s repertoire of addresses. We were received by a landlady who seemed astonished that a mother and a child were seeking a room in her establishment. Having been told that there was no mistake, that this was the very house Tania had been referred to by a faithful client of hers from Lwów, the landlady, a certain Pani Jadwiga, agreed to take us on the condition that we stay no longer than a week: this was aplace for transients, there were no cooking privileges, we would share the toilet with the ladies down the corridor; it would be better if Tania kept me in our room so I didn’t get into people’s way. Rent was payable for the week in advance. The room she gave us was somewhat larger than our last bedroom in Lwów, with an ampler bed, two little settees covered with red plush, some red plush straight chairs, and a dirty rug. We left our suitcases there and went to mail a letter to grandfather, asking him to meet us in the main entrance of the Cathedral; we would be there at noon every day, beginning the day after tomorrow, until he was able to come. Tania didn’t know Warsaw. It was the only suitable monument she could think of that would do equally well in good weather and in the rain.
    We were very hungry, and neither of us wanted to bring food to eat in our room. Tania decided we would go to the Central Station buffet for lunch; our disoriented, out-of-town appearance would not make us conspicuous there, but first we had to buy a street map of Warsaw. We studied it over our meal, Tania saying that we had to figure out the city immediately, so that we could get around without asking directions and attracting attention. Then we walked along a route she had memorized to the Saxon Gardens and sat there for a long time on a bench in the feeble afternoon sun. A woman and a little boy spending an hour or more in the park would not seem unusual. We returned to our rooming house the long way, taking Nowy Świat to Aleje Jerożolimskie. By that time, we were so tired that the vision of the plush settees and thebed seemed cozy; we didn’t want to return to the station. There was a butcher nearby and also a bakery. Across the street from the house, we found a
mleczarnia
, where one could buy milk and cheese. We pushed a settee to the table, ate our bread and