Free Matters of Honor by Louis Begley Page A

Maria’s scholarship and literary attainments. She was the author of the best Polish translation of Horace’s Odes and Epodes. What she proposed seemed practical: she was widowed, living alone, with no relatives near Krakow. There was no need to fear the interference or indiscretion of visitors, and the house had a room that had always been shuttered. She would block it off. Pani Maria thought that if they were very careful the thing could be done. But she would not agree to take in Mr. White as well. She freely admitted that her decision was not rational. Quite simply, she believed that her nerves couldn’t bear the presence of a second adult in that room behind a concealed door. Henry’s parents didn’t think they could get her to go back on that position. It was better to find another hiding place for Mr. White. He had a manager who had worked in his firm for many years, with whom he had always had excellent relations. The man hesitated, his wife had to be convinced, but finally he agreed to take in Mr. White. Mr. White didn’t wait to be asked: as soon as the man said yes, he signed over to him the ownership of the firm, the buildings he and Mrs. White owned, and every other asset to which title could be transferred. The manager said, Don’t worry, if we survive, we will sort this out fairly. They shook hands on it. The real difference between the hiding places was that Mr. White had to live in the cellar. The manager had small children as well as the wife; it was impossible to stop strangers from coming into the house.
    Anyway, Henry said, we did make it through the war, and when the Russians chased the Germans out of Krakow, we staggered into the street like people who had been trapped in a mine. Out of all our family we alone had survived.
    I was shaken by the story, and by the manner in which he told it: matter-of-fact and somehow dismissive.
    What happened next? I asked.
    When? After the war? We lived in Krakow for a while, in our old apartment, which had been taken over by Germans who had left in a hurry. It wasn’t necessary to evict any Poles, and the Germans had left our furniture in place. The man who saved my father’s life agreed to give him enough money to live on and to back him in some deals on the black market. They split the profits. It was a good arrangement. After a while, my father was doing so well that he was sorry to leave the business. Pani Maria—I loved her more than anybody—died of the flu followed by pneumonia. Then the summer was over and it was time for me to enter the
gimnazjum.
All I knew was Polish literature that I read with my mother, and Polish composition, and the Latin and German that I did with Pani Maria. I crammed and passed. There was a chance to buy some kind of visa that allowed us to get out of Poland and into Belgium. My father jumped at it. From Belgium we went to New York. There was one thing my father hadn’t signed over. That was the firm’s bank account at the Morgan Bank in New York, and, by reason of some prewar Polish tax requirements, it was in his own name. So we had a little money, after all, and in the end we were able to settle in Brooklyn.
    I hesitated, but because the experience was unimaginable I let myself ask what it had been like to live hidden in a blocked-off room for three years.
    What do you suppose? he asked. Do you want to know whether we used a chamber pot and who took it out and when? Or how we washed? Or how we quarreled? I won’t tell you.
    I apologized for the question and returned to how he had caught up with his studies. I said I understood about the Latin and the German. But the rest? The English?
    I’ve told you, he said, I crammed. What I don’t know, I fake. I have a good memory. Anything I can read in a book stays with me. But, he said, not everything is in books. As you’ve observed, I can’t throw a ball. I don’t know how to climb trees either. Chances are that I never will.
    I continued to insist—in retrospect