Wartime Lies by Louis Begley Read Free Book Online

one nipple with the razor. He wants the blood to run first on his chest and then into his mouth. Irena said we should play opium den. She could get her mother’s bathrobe to use as a kimono, and we would pretend about the razor. Her breasts were already round, like two bumps.
    My grandmother felt much worse, and then after leeches and cups were applied directly over her liver to relieve the congestion, she improved. Her room no longer had to be darkened. I was allowed to sit with her. She told stories about the country, when I used to visit them in the summer. She wanted to know if I remembered the rabbits and the goose she kept especially for me, and about picking mushrooms. It was all very vivid in her mind, in whatdirection we had gone for a drive on a particular afternoon when my father came to see us, in what clothes she had dressed me, and the day I learned to like cold raspberry soup. She told me about my uncle, and how he died. She said my mother had looked just like him; they were both too gentle and too good. She was glad I took after my grandfather. We were living through a time that was not made for good people.
    I liked being with her. Irena now had to be at the shop almost all the time; her parents did not want to be separated from her in case there was another roundup. For the same reason, grandfather no longer allowed me to go out to play with the boys. The first
Judenaktion
had just taken place in T. It was done one morning by the SS, with some Polish policemen in civilian clothes and a lot of Jewish militiamen. I was in the lumberyard with the boys when it happened. Some of them ran home when the shouting began, but I and a couple of others were too scared; we hid between a large stack of boards and the fence. We could watch from there. The Germans went into one house after another, yelling in German,
Alle Juden heraus!
All Jews out! It took a long while, and then people began to pour into the street, where the Jewish militiamen lined them up in an orderly way. I saw my grandparents and Pan and Pani Kramer and Irena, all standing together. Then the Polish policemen began to check everybody’s papers and divide people into two groups. They put my grandparents, the Kramers and some other people off to the side and pushed the other group toward trucks that had meanwhile arrived at the end of the street. A woman I did notknow suddenly broke away from a file that was climbing on a truck and rushed to the other end of the street, where some large cement pipes were stacked. She crawled into one of them and would not come out, although the Germans were ordering her to. For a while, everything was still. Then two militiamen came and poked at her with long sticks until she appeared, on hands and knees, at the other end. There, the Germans kicked and beat her and finally got her on the truck, which was already quite full, and drove away. The militiamen and the Polish police remained and told the Jews who were still in the street to clean up.
    When I returned, my grandfather said I was right to remain hidden because it all had happened when I wasn’t with them, but the important thing, in fact, was for me not to be alone. This particular roundup was against Jews without working papers or proof that they were dependents of workers. If they had caught me alone, they probably would have taken me too because I had no papers and nobody would have spoken up for me; then grandmother and grandfather would have had to follow, to be with me. I said it made no sense that they had to go with me if it was right for me to hide in the lumberyard instead of running to them, but grandfather explained that they had already lived their lives; they would be quite willing to go if I could stay with Tania. The thing we had to try hard to prevent was for me to be taken alone or to be left alone if they and Tania were taken.
    Tania appeared almost immediately after the roundup was over, very frightened. She had heard about it while itwas