William Styron: The Collected Novels: Lie Down in Darkness, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice (262 page)

At this point Sophie had, as usual after one of Wanda’s fervent come-ons, turned away, saying nothing. She had gazed out the window at the wintry Warsaw desolation, bomb-shattered buildings and rubble heaps shrouded (there was no other word) by the sulphurous soot-blackened snow—a landscape which had once brought tears of sorrow but now only evoked sickish apathy, so much a dingy part did it seem of the day-to-day dreariness and misery of a city ransacked, fearful, hungry, dying. If hell had suburbs, they would look like this wasteland. She sucked at the ends of her ragged fingers. She could not keep herself in even cheap gloves. Gloveless toil at the tar-paper factory had wrecked her hands; one thumb had become badly infected and it hurt. She replied to Wanda, “I’ve told you and I’ll tell you again, my dear, I can’t. I won’t. That’s that.”

“And for the same reason, I suppose?”

“Yes.” Why couldn’t Wanda accept her decision as final, lay off, leave her alone? Her persistence was maddening. “Wanda,” she said softly, “I don’t want to press the point any more than I have to. It’s embarrassing for me to repeat what should be evident to you, because I know you’re basically a sensitive person. But in my position—I say it again—I
can’t
risk it, with children—”

“Other women in the Home Army have children,” Wanda put in abruptly. “Why can’t you get that through your head?”

“I told you before. I’m not
‘other women’
and I’m not in the Home Army,” Sophie retorted, this time with exasperation. “I’m
myself!
I have to act according to my conscience.
You
don’t have children. It’s easy for you to talk like this. I cannot jeopardize the lives of my children. They’re having a hard enough time as it is.”

“I’m afraid I find it very offensive of you, Zosia, placing yourself on a level different from the others. Unable to sacrifice—”

“I’ve
sacrificed,
” Sophie said bitterly. “I’ve lost a husband and a father already, and my mother is dying of tuberculosis. How
much
do I have to sacrifice, in the name of God?” Wanda could scarcely be expected to know of the antipathy—call it indifference—which Sophie harbored toward husband and father, dead in their graves these past three years at Sachsenhausen; nonetheless, what she had said comprised a telling point of sorts, and Sophie detected in Wanda a consequent moderation of tone. A quality that was almost wheedling entered her voice.

“You wouldn’t necessarily be in a very vulnerable position, you understand, Zosia. You wouldn’t be required to do anything truly risky—nothing remotely like what some of the comrades have been doing, even myself. It’s a matter of your brain, your head. There are so many things that you can do that would be invaluable, with your knowledge of the language. Monitoring, their shortwave broadcasts, translating. Those documents that were stolen yesterday from that Gestapo van in Pruszków. Let’s get to the point about this right now. They’re worth their weight in gold, I’m certain! It’s something I could help do, certainly, but there are so many of them and I have a thousand other things on my mind. Don’t you see, Zosia, how incredibly useful you could be if we could just have some of those documents delivered to you here, quite safely—no one would suspect.” She paused, then said in an insistent voice, “You must reconsider, Zosia. This is becoming
indecent
of you. Consider what you can do for all of us. Consider your country! Consider Poland!”

Dusk was coming on. From the ceiling a tiny lightbulb pulsed spiritlessly—lucky tonight, often there was no light. Since dawn Sophie had been shifting piles of tar paper, and she was aware now that her back was hurting her more even than her swollen and infected thumb. As usual she felt unclean, begrimed. With tired, gritty eyes she brooded out across the desolate cityscape, over which the sun never seemed to cast a glimmer. She yawned an exhausted yawn, no longer listening to Wanda’s voice, or rather, no longer hearing the actual words, which had become strident, singsong, hectoring, inspirational. She wondered where Jozef was, wondered if he was safe. She knew only that he was stalking someone in another part of the city, his piano wire in a lethal coil beneath his jacket—a boy of nineteen bent upon his mission of death and retribution. She was not in love with him but she, well—
cared
for him intensely; she liked the warmth of him in bed beside her, and she would be anxious until he returned. Mary Mother of God, she thought, what an existence! On the ugly street below—gray and grainy and featureless like the worn sole of a shoe—a platoon of German soldiers tramped into the gusty wind, the collars of their tunics blowing, rifles slung at the shoulder; listlessly she watched them pass the corner, turn, disappear up a street where but for an intervening bombed-out building she knew she could have seen the steel-and-iron curbside public gallows: it was as functional as a rack upon which secondhand dealers displayed used clothes, and from its horizontal bar citizens of Warsaw beyond counting had twisted and hung. And still hung and twisted.
Christ, would it never end?

She was too weary to attempt even a bad joke, but it did occur to her,
almost,
to break in on Wanda, to reply to her by saying something that was outrageously lodged in her heart: The one and only thing which might lure me into your world would be that radio. Would be to listen to London. But not to war news. Not to news of Allied victories, nor word of the Polish army fighting, nor to orders from the government of Poland in exile. Not to any of these. No, quite simply I think I would risk my life as you do and also give an arm or a hand to listen just once again to Sir Thomas Beecham conducting
Cosí fan tutte.
What a shocking, selfish idea it was—she was aware of its infinite ignobility even as the thought crossed her mind—but she could not help it, it was what she felt.

For a moment shame washed over her for thinking the thought, shame at entertaining the notion in the same habitation where she shared room with Wanda and Jozef, these two selfless, courageous people whose allegiance to humanity and their fellow Poles and concern for the hunted Jews were a repudiation of all that her father had stood for. Despite her own actual blamelessness, she had felt dirtied, defiled by her association with her father in his last obsessed year, and with his atrocious pamphlet, and so her brief relationship with this consecrated sister and her brother had brought her moments of cleansing grace. She gave a small shudder and the fever of shame worsened, became hotter. What would they think if they knew about Professor Biega
ń
ski, or knew that for three years she had carried on her person a copy of that pamphlet? And for what reason?
For what unspeakable reason?
To use it as a small wedge, an instrument of possible negotiation with the Nazis, should the loathsome occasion ever arise? Yes, she replied to herself,
yes
—there was no way out of that vile and disgraceful fact. And now as Wanda rambled on about duty and sacrifice she became so troubled by her secret that simply to save her composure she thrust it from her mind like some foul leaving. She listened again.

“There comes a point in life where every human being must stand up and be counted,” Wanda was saying. “You know what a beautiful person I think you are. And Jozef would die for you!” Her voice rose, now began to scrape her raw. “But you can no longer treat us this way. You have to assume responsibility, Zosia. You’ve come to the place where you can no longer fool around like this, you have to make a choice!”

Just then on the street below she caught sight of her children. They moved slowly up the sidewalk, talking earnestly, dallying as little children do. A few pedestrians straggled past them, homeward bound in the dusk; one, an elderly man bundled up against the wind, clumsily bumped Jan, who made an impudent gesture with his hand, then strolled on with his sister, deep in his chat, explaining... explaining. He had gone to fetch Eva from her flute lesson—a haphazard, sometimes quite sudden and impromptu affair (depending on daily pressures) held in a gutted basement a dozen blocks away. The teacher, a man named Stefan Zaorski, had been a flutist with the Warsaw Symphony, and Sophie had had to cajole and flatter and plead in order to get him to take Eva as a student; aside from the money that Sophie could pay, a pitiful amount, there was little incentive for a dispossessed musician to give lessons in that stark and cheerless city—there were better (although mainly illegal) ways to earn one’s bread. He was seriously crippled with arthritis in both knees, which didn’t help things. But Zaorski, a man still youngish and a bachelor, had a crush on Sophie (as did so many men who saw her and became instantly moonstruck), and doubtless agreed in order to be able to delight in her fair beauty from time to time. Also, Sophie had been energetically, quietly insistent, ultimately persuasive, convincing Zaorski that she could not consider raising Eva without giving her a knowledge of music. One might as well just say no to life itself.

The flute. The enchanted flute. In a city of destroyed or tuneless pianos it would seem a fine instrument for a child’s first leap into music. Eva was mad for the flute, and after four months or so Zaorski had begun to dote on the little girl, amazed at her natural gift, fussed over her as if she were a prodigy (which she might have been), another Landowska, another Paderewski, another Polish offering to music’s pantheon—and finally even refused the trifling amount that Sophie was able to pay. Zaorski popped up now down on the street, appearing as if from nowhere, astonishingly, like a blond genie—a half-starved-looking, limping, florid-faced, broomstraw-haired man with jittery concern in his pale eyes. The woolen sweater he wore, a sooty green, was a mosaic of moth holes. Sophie, startled, leaned forward against the window. The generous, neurotic man had obviously followed Eva, or rather, chased as well as he could after the children, hurrying these many blocks out of some preoccupation or reason which Sophie could not possibly divine. Then all of a sudden his mission became clear. Ever the passionate pedagogue, he had hobbled after Eva in order to correct, or explain, or elaborate on something he had taught her in her most recent lesson—a matter of fingering or phrasing—what? Sophie didn’t know, but she was both touched and amused.

She pushed the window open slightly in order to call down to the group, now huddled near the entrance of the building next door. Eva wore her yellow hair in pigtails. She had lost her front teeth. How, Sophie wondered, could she play a flute? Zaorski had made Eva open her leather case and remove the flute; he flourished it aloft in front of the child, not blowing on it but merely demonstrating some soundless arpeggio with his fingers. Then he put his lips to the instrument and blew several notes. For a long moment Sophie was unable to hear. Huge shadows swept across the wintry heavens. Overhead a squadron of Luftwaffe bombers droned deafeningly eastward toward Russia, flying very low—five, ten, then twenty monster machines spreading their vulturous shapes against the sky. They came late every afternoon as if on schedule, shaking the house with clattering vibrations. Wanda’s voice was drowned out in their roar.

When the planes had passed, Sophie looked down and was able to hear Eva play, but only for the barest instant. The music was familiar but unnameable—Handel, Pergolesi, Gluck?—an intricate sweet trill of piercing nostalgia and miraculous symmetry. A dozen notes in all, no more, they struck antiphonal bells deep within Sophie’s soul. They spoke of all she had been, of all she longed to be—and all she wished for her children, in whatever future God willed. Her heart swooned in those depths; she grew faint, unsteady, and she felt herself in the grip of an aching, devouring love. And at the same time joy—joy that was inexplicably both delicious and despairing—swept across her skin in a cool blaze.

But the small, perfect piping—almost as soon as it had begun—had evaporated on the air. “Wonderful, Eva!” she heard Zaorski’s voice. “Just right!” And she saw the teacher give first Eva then Jan a tender pat on the head before turning and moving jerkily up the street toward his basement. Jan tugged at one of Eva’s pigtails and she gave a yell. “
Stop
it, Jan!” Then the children rushed into the hallway downstairs.

“You
must
come to a decision!” she heard Wanda say insistently.

For a time Sophie was silent. At last, with the sound of the children’s tumbling, ascending footsteps in her ears, she replied softly, “I have already made my choice, as I told you.
I will not get involved.
I mean this!
Schluss!”
Her voice rose on this word and she found herself wondering why she had spoken it in German.
“Schluss—aus!
That’s final!”

During the five months or so before Sophie was taken prisoner the Nazis had made a vigorous effort to ensure that the north of Poland would become
Judenrein
—cleansed of Jews. Beginning in November, 1942, and extending through the following January, a program of deportation was instituted whereby the many thousands of Jews living in the northeastern district of Bialystok were jammed onto trains and shipped to concentration camps throughout the country. Funneled down into the railway complex in Warsaw, the majority of these Jews from the north eventually found themselves at Auschwitz. Meanwhile, in Warsaw itself there had come a lull in the action against the Jews—at least in terms of gross deportations. That the deportations from Warsaw had already been extensive may be seen from some twilight statistics. Before the German invasion of Poland in 1939 Warsaw’s Jewish population was in the neighborhood of 450,000—next to New York, the largest concentration of Jews to be found in any city on earth. Only three years later the Jews living in Warsaw numbered 70,000; most of the others perished not only at Auschwitz but at Sobibór, Belzec, Chelmno, Maidanek and, above all, Treblinka. This last camp was located in wild country at an advantageously short distance from Warsaw, and unlike Auschwitz, which to a large extent was involved in slave labor, became a place totally consecrated to extermination. It was plainly not chance that the huge “resettlements” from the Warsaw ghetto which occurred in July and August of 1942, and which left that quarter a ghostly shell, were coincident with the establishment of the bucolic hideaway of Treblinka and its gas chambers.