The Children's War

by Stroyar, J. N.

  Peter thought it would be amusing to say there was no “Mrs. Halifax,” only a deadly colonel, but he had trained himself to respond differently and he dutifully replied, “I cannot comment on my personal life. Too many other lives would be put at stake.”

  “Oh, just a hint,” Arieka begged.

  Peter shook his head.

  “Well, what about your handler? Information is that a member of the Polish government in exile is handling most of your trip. How in the world are you mixed up with them?” the host asked.

  “A coalition of interested parties representing a wide variety of European nationalities sponsored my trip here,” Peter lied, “and they elected one member as their representative. It was quite arbitrary.”

  “Are you going back?” Itto pressed.

  “I can’t comment.”

  “Will you be staying in America?” Itto cleverly rephrased the question.

  “I can’t comment.”

  “The man has survived Gestapo interrogations, Itto,” Arieka chided. “Do you think you’re going to trick him now?”

  “Why in the world would anyone go back to such an awful place?” Winston asked, breaking his own rule.

  “Perhaps to fight for his homeland,” Arieka said, saving Peter from answering. She looked directly into Peter’s eyes and predicted somewhat sadly, “You will go back.”

  “I can’t comment,” Peter replied with a rueful smile.

  “You will go back, and you will fight,” Arieka insisted. “We all saw you on the news this evening—you will fight. And even if you won’t say it, I will.” She turned toward the audience and admonished, “You should support him. He fights forfreedom and justice in this world! There is too little of that, and we should support these people wherever they are. He will give his life; at least you can write a check!” She turned toward Peter and said, “Whom do you recommend?”

  Peter considered for a moment, then allowed himself the rare pleasure of answering truthfully. “My personal favorite is the Home Army. Their American fund is registered at 666 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan F.C. Send your checks there.” He was mindful of the furious English response he could expect from that, and it might also give the Nazis a hint as to his current location. Oh, well, he thought, somewhat drunkenly, to hell with them. None of the English contingent had bothered to say so much as a word to him yet. The Armia Krajowa, the Home Army, was his favorite; after all, they paid his salary, such as it was.

  59

  THE NEXT MORNING Peter went to his in-laws for a late breakfast. For the first time since his arrival, he noticed that he was being tailed. He wondered if he had been followed all along and had only just noticed now or if it had just started. Either way, he felt disgusted by the Underground’s lack of trust in him. As he jumped off and back onto a subway, finally losing the fellow, he thought that perhaps the Underground had been concerned for his safety after his encounter with the Nazi sympathizers and he was frustrating them by losing his bodyguard. Serves them right for leaving him in the dark, he thought as the train sped out of the station.

  Joanna jumped on him at the door and would not let go, wrapping herself tenaciously around him. He held and hugged her and kissed her repeatedly as he watched Anna mix up the pancakes. It was an American recipe she had picked up, and he thought he might add it to his repertoire. Anna assured him, though, that the essential ingredient was the maple syrup that would be poured on afterward, and since that was completely unavailable back home, there was little point in learning how to make them. Nevertheless he watched; it gave him an excuse to stay away from the table and not converse with either Alex or Zosia. He suspected both were somewhat miffed by his performance on the late-night show, and that no one had mentioned it yet added to this suspicion.

  “So what did you think of last night?” he finally prompted.

  “Great job,” Alex enthused.

  “Great,” Anna agreed.

  “Yet another personality, eh?” Zosia muttered somewhat incongruously.

  He frowned at her, but before he could ask what she meant, Joanna chimed in with, “I thought you were wonderful, Dad!”

  “You stayed up?”

  “Of course!” she giggled.

  Alex ground out his cigarette and urged, “Why don’t you sit down, boy, you look tired.”

  “You’ve registered as an addict?” Peter asked.

  Alex studied the smoldering butt and replied, “Yeah, we both did. They have special waiver forms for ómigrós to make registration easier. We get to skip all the ‘smoking will kill you’ classes. They figure we’re all a lost cause.”

  “You registered, too?” Peter asked Anna.

  She nodded as she added some more flour to the batter. “Yes, but I’ve quit. Alex uses up my allotment.”

  “Two packs a day, eh, Alex?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, don’t tell me about it. Anyway, I give some of Anna’s away. Makes me look generous.”

  “You shouldn’t smoke in here,” Zosia said between yawns as she stared sleepily-into her coffee cup.

  “No,” Anna agreed, “I’ve asked you not to, at least not while Zosia’s here. And Joanna.”

  “Okay, all right,” Alex groaned, getting up. “I’ll be back in a couple of minutes. Peter, why don’t you come out with me?”

  Peter considered Alex’s invitation. He did not want to talk to Alex, but on the other hand a cigarette would be really nice. After smoking almost a pack the previous night, he had been craving them all morning. “All right,” he agreed, setting Joanna down. “I’ll just be a minute,” he assured her.

  They leaned against the wall of the hallway near the door. It was not legal to smoke in the hallways, but to go down and out to the street would take too long what with the pancakes already on the griddle. Alex offered Peter a cigarette and lit it for him, then lit one for himself.

  “Well, what do you want?” Peter asked abruptly.

  “Hey, maybe I was just being friendly. Don’t get much chance to talk to you, old boy.”

  “Tell me, do the other Brits here speak with your accent?” That awful, whiny, stilted accent.

  “Yeah, the old ones do. The young ones—their kids—have a sort of American twang to it all. Sounds really odd.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Course, some of the new arrivals sound like you. Is your accent common in England now?” Alex asked without mentioning how low class it sounded. It grated on him terribly.

  “Can’t say. It seems to be ubiquitous in London,” Peter answered, then added just to annoy Alex, “We’re all the same now, same lack of rights, same low Nichtdeutsch classification, same accent. Those clever Germans have managed to solve a thousand-year-old class problem in just a couple of decades.”

  “Replaced, rather than solved. It’s the Normans all over again.”

  “Let’s hope not. Can you imagine grammarians, a thousand years from now, chiding schoolchildren for the vulgar habit of not putting prepositions at the end of their sentences? Anyway, what did you want to ask me?”

  Alex sighed. Was he that obvious? “All right. I wanted to know exactly how truthful you’ve been about that messy business with your arrest and your friends’ deaths.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve been keeping in touch with our English friends here—the ones who paid for your trip—and, well, either no one recognizes you or they’re keeping quiet about it. Even after you laid out the details on that show.”

  “So?”

  “So after your performance last night—by the way, good job on that plug at the end. Did you set it up with that woman?”

  “No. It was spontaneous.”

  “It was great. We sent somebody posthaste to the office in the middle of the night to take calls after that, and it was just as well. The phones have been ringing off the hook ever since.”

  “Thanks. So, you were saying?”

  “Oh, yeah. Well, our friends were a bit upset at being excluded.”

  Peter shrugge
d. “She asked for one name.”

  “Oh, I don’t blame you.” Alex ground out his cigarette on the wall, flicked the end onto the floor, and lit another cigarette. “In fact, I was very pleased. No, it’s not that. They just seemed to realize that they’ve been snubbing you. They were afraid of the negative consequences of being associated with your visit, you know, divisiveness, et cetera. Now, as the money is rolling into our office, they’ve realized that might be a mistake. So, they’ve invited us all to a reception at England House. I wanted to check with you before I said yes or no. I wanted to give you a chance to back out without Zosia knowing just in case there’s something you’re not telling her.”

  Peter stooped down and picked up the end that Alex had dropped.

  “Oh, there’s a cleaning person here.”

  “So that requires you to act like a pig?” Peter asked rather quietly as he shoved the end into his pocket. As he straightened, he answered Alex’s question, “I’ve told you everything I know about what happened then. If they know more, I’d be glad to hear it.”

  “So you really have no idea what happened?”

  Peter shook his head.

  “Okay then. Do you want to go?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I don’t care if they know me. I have nothing to hide. It should be obvious by now that I wasn’t the one who ratted us out. There’s just one thing.”

  “What?”

  “No cameras, no press, no publicity. I’m tired. Just an evening out. Okay?” Peter pleaded.

  “I’ll make that a condition of your acceptance.”

  “Thanks. Let’s get some food.”

  “Sure.”

  Over breakfast they talked about how Alex and Anna were adjusting to their new home.

  “Your third homeland, huh, Alex?” Peter asked between mouthfuls of Anna’s delicious pancakes. She was right, he thought, the syrup was essential.

  Alex nodded pensively. “I’m getting used to it.” He added philosophically, “I guess you get used to anything.”

  Zosia glanced at Peter as if expecting him to react badly to that comment, but he did not. Instead he said, “Life here certainly seems to be agreeing with you.”

  Alex patted his stomach and laughed. “Yeah, it took me a while to get used to so much food, but I’m learning to control myself now.”

  “I was more commenting on your other changes. You look quite different.”

  “Quite deliberately. I got rid of some of the gray and acquired these.” He pulled off his glasses and contemplated them. “Spectacles. Didn’t realize I was missing so much before!”

  “Ah. Why the hair dye? Do you think it makes you more American?”

  “No. You remember, we were Ryszard’s parents in Göringstadt, don’t you?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Well, he was sure to have been observed throughout that time. We think we’ve purged all the photographs of him and Kasia with us, and with you and Zosia, by the way, but we can never be sure. So, now that I’m a public figure, it’s best if I don’t look like that fellow that may turn up in a photograph in some security file on Ryszard. You can imagine how disastrous it would be if at some future date someone stumbles across a photograph of Ryszard in the company of a current member of a government in exile.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  “So, I do what I can to minimize that danger, however remote.”

  “Makes sense. How are you fitting in otherwise?” Peter asked. Zosia looked at him, as if surprised by his question.

  “Well enough. Better than the last time I changed homelands.” Alex laughed.

  “How old were you when you were deported?”

  “By the time I actually landed in the General Gouvernement—eighteen. Prior to that we spent a number of years in an internment camp.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “My family, my mother included, though by no stretch of the imagination could she be considered foreign. But she had married an immigrant, so . . .” Alex’s voice fell off as he reminisced.

  “What happened to them?” Peter asked.

  Alex shrugged. “I got pulled out at eighteen. That’s the last I saw them. Never was able to trace them.”

  “I’m sorry,” Peter responded softly.

  Joanna looked up from her food. “You lost your mommy and daddy?” she asked her grandfather.

  Alex nodded. To try to lighten the mood for her sake, he said, “I don’t know what happened to them. Maybe they lived happily somewhere.”

  Joanna nodded in agreement, determined to accept the unbelievable in order to cheer up her grandfather.

  “What happened when you arrived on the Continent?” Peter asked, trying to gently veer the subject away from Alex’s missing family.

  “I suppose I was being sent to work somewhere. There was a huge transport of us and it was terribly disorganized. We were marched all over the place. At some point, I realized I was near to where my father said he had come from, so I just walked away from the march. Walked into the woods and disappeared. Stumbled across some partisans.”

  “And?” The ending was not obvious to Peter.

  “Oh, I guess I looked bedraggled enough that they took pity on me, and I knew a few words of Polish. They knew there was a transport of English deportees, so they had no trouble believing my story, and they let me stay with them. They thought my language abilities would be useful. I fought a bit with their group, then moved on and into the city.”

  “Kraków?”

  “Yes. Moved up in the Home Army, and, well, you know the rest.”

  “Vaguely. But how did you manage to learn German without an English accent? You were quite old.”

  “Oh, I learned it when I was a kid.”

  “In the internment camp?”

  “No, I just refined it there. You see, my father was from a village near Kraków, or Krakau, as it was called, so he fell into the Austrian partition of Poland and had been schooled in German. He was a musician and worked in Kraków, but then after the first war, he moved to Vienna to work there. When anti-Semitism became a problem for him there—”

  “He was Jewish?” Peter and Zosia asked simultaneously.

  “Seems so.Anyway, he got a job in London. I guess he told the immigration authorities he was Catholic because there was no record of his being Jewish in their files when they got captured by the Nazis. Or maybe they didn’t record that sort of information. I think in the internment camp, he told the doctor his mother had been American, so that he could explain being circumcised. Or some such nonsense. They bought his story—at least while I was there. He and Mom always fretted about that, though.”

  “What was she?” Zosia asked suspiciously.

  “Anglican. Didn’t you know?”

  Zosia reddened. “No.”

  “Ah, it wasn’t important, neither practiced anything.”

  “Your father converted to marry me,” Anna explained, glancing at Peter meaningfully.

  “As I was saying,” Alex continued, “despite marrying an Englishwoman, my father’s dream was to return to Vienna, once things there settled down. He kept preparing for the big move and insisted the whole family learn German, so I did, from childhood.”

  “That explains the Austrian accent,” Peter commented.

  “Yes, and the fact that I never really learned Polish. A few words here and there, but he thought it was too much to ask us to be trilingual.”

  “So, you were a rather reluctant Polish patriot,” Peter remarked.

  Alex shrugged. “I was British, what can I say? I never expected to be anything else, except maybe Austrian. Circumstances and the Germans changed my mind and here I am. Or rather, there I was. Now I’m here.”

  “And you’ve changed allegiances yet again,” Peter teased.

  “How so?”

  “You used to say we when talking about the British, now you say we and mean the Poles.”

  “Ah, well, dealing with the ex-pat community here has made me a bit less British than I used to be. I
imagine someday you’ll have trouble thinking of yourself as British.”

  “English,” Peter corrected. “I’ve never felt any connection to those others.”

  “Divide and conquer,” Anna interjected.

  “I suppose,” Peter agreed. “In any case, I never had any affinity for the ex-pats, either. Nobody at home does.”

  “Well, my guess is, you’ll have trouble feeling at home among the English pretty soon,” Alex reiterated.

  “Probably. My connections with home have already grown pretty tenuous.”

  Anna shrugged. “I guess we all learn to adapt.”

  “Does that mean you’ll become an American?” Peter asked.

  “Never!” Zosia snorted.

  “Maybe,” Alex corrected her, “but I’m old and it’s a bit late to change. Besides, I’m only here as a foreign representative. But”—and here Alex switched to English to try to exclude Joanna from the conversation—“if something happened to Zosia, I would raise her daughter here as an American.”

  Anna began conversing with Joanna to make the rude language transition and their sudden exclusion from the conversation less noticeable to her. They chatted about Joanna’s plans for the day in Polish, and their words filled the awkward silence that followed Alex’s words.

  “If something happens to me,” Zosia said deliberately and too calmly, “then she will be raised by Peter in Szaflary. He is, after all, her father.”

  “I don’t think that’s all gone through yet,” Alex replied, but then showing his palms in a defensive gesture, he added quickly, “But I misspoke. I meant if something happened to both of you.”

  “And Marysia and Stefi and Tadek,” Zosia stated coldly.

  “Oh, Zosiu! You had us as the guardians before! You trusted us then!”

  “That was when you lived there. I don’t want my daughter raised here.”

  “Why not? It’s a good life. If both you and Peter are dead, don’t you think she’ll be sufficiently traumatized? Don’t you think she’d deserve a better life than what can be offered there?”