Free Wartime Lies by Louis Begley Page B

saved. Of course, some of the knights will puzzle out the truth and kill Konrad, but he will die happily, like Samson, because he has avenged his people.
    Alas, the Wehrmacht radio was reporting nothing as threatening for the Reich. German troops had reached the Caucasus and entered Stalingrad. They were on the Volga. Africa was far away and irrelevant to Europe; each English success there seemed followed by a defeat. TheAmericans were bleeding to death on the atolls of the Pacific. Without any mention on the radio, the ghetto in Lwów had been emptied. Reinhard began to speak of concentration camps where people were meant to die. We wondered if we were the only Jews left in Lwów.
    Reinhard was worried about my grandmother. Both he and she thought she had jaundice. She was very tired and very uncomfortable. All the remedies suggested by Tania, the repository of my father’s science, had been tried; a doctor was needed but Reinhard didn’t want to put himself in the hands of the Catholic surgeon in T. Perhaps, if grandmother improved even a little, he could bring her to Lwów. He was also worried about Bern. A personage he had never seen before—he did not even know if the man was a Jew or a Pole, perhaps just an agent provocateur—had come to the apartment with a message that Bern and his friends were in desperate need: Could he, Reinhard, help? He threw the man out, but the event could not be ignored. It could only mean that Bern had talked. If he had talked, that meant there were others who could talk in turn. If only he could emigrate to Palestine with us! This became his favorite joke.
    That there were other Jews in Lwów became evident shortly afterward, during one of Tania’s and my evening walks. A man approached us and began talking very quickly, asking Tania not to be frightened and above all not to appear frightened. He had something of interest to relate. Tania’s face looked frozen and her grip on my hand tightened; we had been told that this was the usual approach of a street blackmailer of Jews. This man, however,pretended to be different. He knew Bern. He knew my father. He had often seen Tania in the past, although she did not remember him. He was himself a Jew, trying to survive in Lwów, like ourselves. Could Tania give him some money? God would reward her and her little nephew; he had Aryan papers that cost a fortune, he was paying his former janitor to hide his wife, there was almost nothing left. Unfortunately, his wife did not have the right look; she could not pass using Aryan papers. Tania said we had become poor as well, but she would do what she could. She would leave an envelope for him if he suggested a spot; it would be there tomorrow. They settled on the space behind a plaster figure in the entrance of the post office. Hertz—he asked us to call him by his real name—commended Tania for her prudence. Panna is right not to want to meet me, I could be followed; then all three of us birds would be caught in one net. But Panna must not worry that we will lose contact. I have noted where she and the precious boy reside.
    We said good-bye. Tania turned the corner, and then another, until she found a street bench. We sat down. She put my hand on her breast to show me how hard her heart was beating. She said we were trapped; it did not matter that this man was a Jew. He reeked of vulgarity and swinishness. He would bleed us white and then sell us. We should immediately move to another apartment, perhaps out of Lwów, but she did not dare tell Reinhard. Coming on top of the messenger from Bern, it would be the last straw. She would give the man money, not too much but not too little. If she gave too little he would be back right away, and we had to play for time. She would put the envelopein the agreed place this very evening. She did not want him to be able to see her depositing it tomorrow; he might be waiting somewhere near the post office, hoping to show her to another bandit. She took me by