William Styron: The Collected Novels: Lie Down in Darkness, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice (280 page)

“Wanda looked at him. ‘I thought you had been told. Three Luger automatics.’

“This face of Feldshon went white, it actually went white. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said in a whisper. ‘I was told that there would be a dozen pistols, perhaps fifteen. Also some grenades. I can’t believe it!’ I could see how filled with rage he was, but it was also despair. He shook his head. ‘Three Lugers, one with a broken firing pin. My God!’

“Wanda said in this very businesslike way—trying to control her own feelings, I could tell, ‘It’s the best we could do at the moment. We are going to try to get more. I think we will. There are four hundred rounds of ammunition. You’ll need more and we’ll try to get that too.’

“Feldshon suddenly said in this softer voice, a little apologetic, ‘You’ll forgive my reaction, I hope. I had just been led to believe more, and it’s a disappointment. Also, earlier today I was trying to deal with another partisan group, trying to see whether we might be confident of help.’ And he paused and looked at Wanda with this furious expression. ‘It was horrible—it was unbelievable! Drunken bastards! They actually laughed at us, they sneered at us—and they enjoyed laughing and sneering. They called us kikes! These were
Poles.’

“Wanda asked in this matter-of-fact way, ‘Who were these people?’

“ ‘The O.N.R. they call themselves. But I had the same difficulty yesterday with another Polish Resistance group.’ He looked at Wanda, filled with this rage and despair, and said, ‘Three pistols I get, and sneers and laughter, to hold off twenty thousand Nazi troops. In the name of God, what is
happening
?’

“Wanda was getting very agitated at Feldshon, I could tell, just enraged at everything—at
life. ‘
The O.N.R., that bunch of collaborators. Fanatics, Fascists. As a Jew, you could have received more sympathy from the Ukrainians or Hans Frank. But let me give you a further word of warning. The Communists are just as bad. Worse. If you ever meet the Red partisans under General Korczynski, you risk being shot on sight.’

“ ‘It’s unspeakable!’ Feldshon said. ‘I’m grateful for the three pistols, but can’t you see how it makes me want to laugh? There is something beyond belief going on here! Did you ever read
Lord Jim?
About the officer who deserts the sinking ship, taking to a lifeboat while the helpless passengers are left to their fate? Forgive me this reference, but I can’t help seeing the same thing here. We are being left to drown by our countrymen!’

“I saw Wanda get up and put her fingertips on the table and lean a little toward Feldshon. Again she was trying to control herself, but I could tell it was hard. She looked so pale and exhausted. And she began to talk in this desperate voice. ‘Feldshon, you’re either stupid or naïve or both. It seems doubtful that someone who appreciates Conrad is stupid, so you must be naïve. Surely you haven’t forgotten the simple fact that Poland is an
anti-Semitic country.
You yourself just used the word “oppressor.” Living in a nation which practically invented anti-Semitism, living in a ghetto, which we Poles originated, how could you
expect
any help from your compatriots? How could you expect anything except from a few of us who for whatever reason—idealism, moral conviction, simple human solidarity, whatever—want to do what we can to save some of your lives? My God, Feldshon, your parents probably left Poland with you to get Jew-haters off their backs. Poor creatures, they certainly couldn’t have known that that warm, assimilating, Jew-loving, humanistic bosom of Germany would turn to fire and ice and cast you out. They couldn’t have known that when you returned to Poland, there would be the same Jew-haters waiting for you and your wife and daughter, ready to grind all of you into the dust. This is a cruel country, Feldshon. It has grown so cruel over the years because it has so many times tasted
defeat.
Despite the
Dreck
that’s been written in the Gospels, adversity produces not understanding and compassion, but cruelty. And defeated people like the Poles know how to be supremely cruel to other people who have set themselves apart, like you Jews. I’m surprised you got away from that O.N.R. bunch with just being called a kike!’ She stopped for a second, then said, ‘Do you find it strange, then, that I still love this country more than I care to say—more than life itself—and that if I had to I would willingly die for it ten minutes from now?’

“Feldshon glared back at Wanda and said, ‘I’m afraid I want to, but of course I can’t, being ready to die myself.’

“I was getting worried about Wanda. I had never seen her so tired, I guess you would say
unstrung.
She had been working so hard, eating so little, going without sleep. Her voice would crack every now and then, and I saw her fingers tremble where she had them pressed against the table. She closed her eyes, clenched them shut, and shivered, swaying a little. I thought she might faint. Then she opened her eyes and spoke again. Her voice was hoarse and strained, filled with such grief. ‘You were speaking of
Lord Jim,
a book I happen to know. I think your comparison is a good one, but you somehow have forgotten the ending. I think you’ve forgotten how in the end the hero redeems himself for his betrayal, redeems himself through his own death. His own suffering and death. Is it too much to think that some of us Poles will be able to redeem the betrayal of you Jews by our countrymen? Even if our struggle doesn’t save you? No matter. Whether it does or doesn’t save you, I for one will be satisfied that we tried—through our suffering, and probably even our own deaths.’

“After a moment Wanda said, ‘I haven’t wanted to offend you, Feldshon. You’re a brave man, that’s plain. You’ve risked your life getting here tonight. I know what your ordeal is. I’ve known ever since last summer when I saw the first photographs smuggled out of Treblinka. I was one of the first to see them, and like everyone else, I didn’t believe them at first. I believe them now. Your ordeal can’t be surpassed in horror. Every time I go near the ghetto I am reminded of rats in a barrel being shot at by a madman with a machine gun. That’s how I see your helplessness. But we Poles are helpless in our own way. We have more freedom than you Jews have—much more, more freedom of movement, more freedom from immediate danger—but we’re still under daily siege. Instead of being like rats in a barrel, we’re like rats in a burning building. We can move away from the flame, find cool spots, get down in the basement where it’s safe. A tiny few can even escape from the building. Every day many of us are burned alive, but it’s a big building and we are also saved by our very numbers. The fire can’t get us all, and then someday—maybe—the fire is going to burn out. If it does, there’ll be plenty of survivors. But the barrel—almost none of the rats in the barrel will live.’ Wanda took a deep breath and looked directly at Feldshon. ‘But let me ask you, Feldshon. How much concern can you expect the terrified rats in the building to have for the rats outside in the barrel—the rats whom they’ve never felt any kinship with, anyway?’

“Feldshon just looked at Wanda. He hadn’t taken his eyes off her in minutes. He didn’t say anything.

“Wanda looked at her watch then. ‘In exactly four minutes we’ll hear a whistle. That means the two of you get out of here and downstairs. The parcels will be waiting at the door.’ Then, after saying that, she went on, ‘Three days ago I was negotiating in the ghetto with one of your compatriots. I won’t mention his name, no need for that. I’ll just say that he’s a leader of one of those factions which violently opposes you and your own group. I think he’s a poet or a novelist. I liked him, all right, but I couldn’t stand a certain thing he said. It sounded so pretentious, this way he was speaking of Jews. He used the phrase “our precious heritage of suffering.” ’

“At this point Feldshon broke in and said something that made us all laugh a little. Even Wanda smiled. He said, ‘That could only be Lewental. Moses Lewental. Such
Schmalz.
’

“But then Wanda said, ’I despise the idea of suffering being precious. In this war everyone suffers—Jews, Poles, Gypsies, Russians, Czechs, Yugoslavs, all the others. Everyone’s a victim. The Jews are also the victims of victims, that’s the main difference. But none of the suffering is precious and all die shitty deaths. Before you go I want to show you some photographs. I was carrying them in my pocket when I was speaking to Lewental. I had just gotten hold of them. I wanted to show them to him, but for some reason I didn’t. I’ll show them to you.’

“Just then the light went out, the little bulb simply flickered out. I felt this stab of fear in the middle of my heart. Sometimes it was just the electricity failing. Other times I knew that when the Germans laid an ambush they would stop the power to a building so they could trap people in their searchlights. We all stayed still for a moment. There was some light in a glow from the little fireplace. Then when Wanda was sure it was just a light failure she got a candle and lit it. I was still shivering, afraid, when Wanda threw several snapshots on the table beneath the candle and said, ‘Look at this.’

“We all bent forward to look. At first I couldn’t make out what it was, just a jumble of sticks—a great mass of sticks like small tree limbs. Then I saw what it was—this unbearable sight, a boxcar full of dead children, scores of them, maybe a hundred, all of them in these stiff and jumbled positions that could only come from being frozen to death. The other photographs were the same—other boxcars with scores of children, all stiff and frozen.

“ ‘These are not Jewish children,’ Wanda said, ‘these are little Polish children, none of them over twelve years old. They’re some of the little rats who didn’t make it in the burning building. These pictures were taken by Home Army members who broke into these boxcars on a siding somewhere between Zamo
ść
and Lublin. There are several hundred in these pictures, from one train alone. There were other trains that were put on sidings where the children either starved or froze to death, or both. This is just a sample. The others who died number in the thousands.’

“No one spoke. I could just hear all of us breathing, but no one spoke. Finally Wanda began to talk, and for the first time her voice was truly choked and unsteady—you could almost feel the exhaustion in it, and the grief. ‘We still don’t know exactly where these children came from but we think we know who they are. It is believed that they are the rejected ones from the Germanization program, the Lebensborn program. We think they came from the region around Zamo
ść
. I’ve been told that they were among the thousands who were taken from their parents but not considered racially suitable and so consigned for disposal—meaning extermination—at Maidanek or Auschwitz. But they didn’t get there. In due time the train, like a lot of others, was diverted onto sidings where the children were allowed to die in the condition you see here. Others starved to death, still more suffocated in hermetically sealed cars. Thirty thousand Polish children have disappeared from the Zamo
ść
region alone. Thousands and thousands of these have died. This is mass murder too, Feldshon.’ She ran her hands over her eyes, then said, ‘I was going to tell you of the adults, the thousands of innocent men and women slaughtered in Zamo
ść
alone. But I won’t. I’m very tired, suddenly I feel very dizzy. These children are enough.’

“Wanda was swaying a little. I remember catching her by the elbow and trying to pull her gently down, make her sit down. But she kept talking in the candlelight, in this flat monotonous voice now, as in a trance. ‘The Nazis hate you the most, Feldshon, and you will suffer the most by far, but they’re not going to stop with the Jews. Do you think when they finish with you Jews they’re going to dust off their hands and stop murdering and make their peace with the world? You underestimate their evil if you have such a delusion. Because once they finish you off they’re going to come and get me. Even though I’m half German. I imagine they will not let me off easy, before the end. Then they’re going to seize my pretty blond friend here and do with her what they’ve done to you. At the same time they will not spare her children, any more than they spared these little frozen ones you see right here.’ ”

In the darkening shoebox of a room in Washington, D.C., Sophie and I, almost without our being aware of it, had exchanged places, so that it was I who lay on the bed staring up at the ceiling while she stood by the window where I had first placed myself, brooding over the distant fire. She fell silent for a while and I could see the side of her face, which was deep in remembrance, her gaze resting on the smoky horizon. Amid the silence I heard the clucking and chortling of the pigeons on the ledge outside, a far-off blurred commotion where men struggled with the blaze. The church bell struck again: it was four.

At last Sophie spoke again. “At Auschwitz the next year, as I told you, they seized Wanda and tortured her and they hung her up on a hook and let her strangle to death. After I heard that, I would think about her in so many ways, but mainly I would remember her on that night in Warsaw. I would see her in my mind after Feldshon and the other Jew had left to get the guns, sitting at the table with her face buried in her arms, completely worn-out and weeping. It’s strange, I never saw her cry before. I think she always considered it a weakness. But I remember leaning over next to her with my hand on her shoulder, watching her weep. She was so young, only my age. So brave.

“She was a lesbian, Stingo. It don’t matter any more what she was, it didn’t matter then. But I thought you might want to know, after me telling you so much about everything else. We slept together once or twice—I might as well tell you that too—but it didn’t mean much to either of us, I think. She knew deep down that I—well, I didn’t really respond to her that way and so she never pressed me to go on. Never got angry or anything. I loved her, though, because she was better than me, and so incredibly brave.

“So as I say, she foretold her own death, and my death, and the death of my children. She went to sleep with her head in her arms at the table. I didn’t want to disturb her right then, and I thought of what she had said about the children, and the pictures of those little frozen bodies—I was suddenly haunted and terrified in a way I’d never been before, even in the middle of the gloom that I’d experienced so many times, gloom like the taste of death. I went into the room where my children were sleeping. I was so overcome by what Wanda had said that I did something that I knew I shouldn’t do even as I was doing it—waking Jan and Eva and taking them both up in my arms next to me. So heavy they both were, waking and moaning and whispering, yet strangely light, I guess, because of my frantic desire to hold them both in my arms. And being filled with terror and despair over Wanda’s words about the future, knowing the truth of her words and not being able to deal with anything so monstrous, so immense.