Amandine (21 page)

Aloof as a portrait at the head of her table, flanked by her perfumed, scrupulously shined and creased guests, the colonel on her right, the countess sipped and dined with the Wehrmacht and, together, they spoke vaguely of their lives. During those first days, the countess thought to invite her female friends to dine so as to amuse the young men. But among those few who remained, there was no one who would be quite right. No one who was pretty but not too pretty, charming but not fatally so. Of course they found their own women, the paid ones from the Ukraine who sat in groups in the market bars and some of the local girls, too, love and lust or want of supper overriding patriotism from time to time. But the men were respectful and even drank in a mostly chivalric way. Some of the aides were posted outside the city several days each week and there were mandatory maneuvers each afternoon for the others, so the house was tranquil much of the time. Life proceeded.

The evenings after dinner Valeska spent in her rooms, reading, listening openly to the BBC, even though it was decreed that those radios not already confiscated be surrendered. Early on the colonel asked if it would disturb her should he play the piano sometimes.
Not at all, I play myself
. She, Chopin, he, Bach, the two played for one another and often for the others. Valeska and the colonel were hardly ever alone yet, when they were, she grew skilled at keeping him close while keeping away—a dance that the colonel enjoyed—and the only intimacy they approached was in speaking of their families. Of Andzelika and Janusz, of the colonel’s wife, his adult children.

One evening the colonel enters the salon while Valeska is playing the piano, her heavy white silk shawl in his hands. He stands behind her, gently places the shawl on her shoulders. His hands linger, trembling. She slows her playing but does not stop. Even as he begins to speak, she continues to play.

“Come, let’s walk a bit. I’d like to take you to a little place where I go from time to time.”

“As you well know, I go out very rarely in the evening and never in the company of an occupying officer. And less to some cellar bar.”

“This evening I am not an occupying officer but a man who wishes to, to ‘court’ you, Valeska.” It is the first time he omits her title. “And what makes you think that I would take you to a cellar bar?”

“I understand it’s only those—only the most degraded of those—where we
Untermenschen
are permitted.”

“Allow me to show you that, for every rule, there is an exception.”

The colonel has two motives for his invitation. Apart from his wanting to be with Valeska in a setting where they might better ignore his role as the occupier and hers as the invaded, he desires to tell her that many of the officers have begun to send for their families. The governor-general of Krakow, Hans Frank, having a few days earlier publicly declared: “The world will cease to exist before we Nazis depart Krakow,” spurred a rush of soldiers’ communications with their families who waited in the fatherland. The colonel was not one of those who wrote to his wife. Rather it was he who received a telegram from her.
“Ich freue mich Sie wiederzusehen
. I look forward to seeing you again,” it said. He has yet to respond.

Estranged emotionally for much of their marriage, the colonel and his wife had long been adept at farce, of painting over sangfroid, trying to make it pass for love. For the children, for the sake of familial duty. But when the children were grown and gone and the musings of war reached him, the colonel thought to take a mistress. The Wehrmacht would make a fine one, he’d thought. And she did. Until he saw the woman with the long black eyes mincing along across the market square of Krakow.
Am I in love with the countess? Never having felt love nor even mistaken it, I can hardly say. Still
.

This evening he wishes to
inform
the countess of the impending arrival of some of his men’s families and, more, to watch those eyes when he tells her that perhaps his wife, too, will join him. Another game, yes. But how else to know what she thinks? Over these months, he has learned to listen more to her eyes than her words.

The countess has been speaking. Something about
patriotism
, is it?

“I cannot claim expressions of fervid patriotism, Colonel, and I freely admit that I have been more than a little Neroesque in my fretting over the state of my marble floors or my hairdo while shunning the gruesome truths about the occupation of my country. But I, too,
am of the race of
Untermenschen
, Colonel; I, too, am a Pole. Why would you contaminate yourself by ‘courting,’ as you call it, one of us? What makes you think that I would want you, Colonel? How do I know what you do when you leave here in the morning, or what you’ve done or are inclined to do in the name of your heinous little god?
The other name of honor is loyalty
. Isn’t that the oath you swore, Colonel? In other words, shall you not do whatever is asked of you?
Whatever
. I beg you not to mistake my hospitality for anything more. I am playing house with you and your men, waiting as politely as I can for the day when you shall leave my home and my city.”

The countess has brusquely removed the shawl placed by the colonel so tenderly a few moments before. It falls from her hands, and the colonel bends to retrieve it. Holding it, wishing he were holding her, he tells her quietly, “Madame, you quote the SS oath, which is not mine. The German race, like all others, births men of different characters. I would peacefully shoot myself before I could be convinced to certain acts. But you already know that, Valeska. And, as well, you know something else.”

“What is it that I know, Colonel?”

“That my sentimental feelings for you are, are
requited
. Yes, that’s the word I was searching for.”

I
T IS TOWARD THE END OF JUNE 1940—JUNE 22, TO BE PRECISE—A
week or so after the encounter between Valeska and the colonel. Since that evening, the two have remained in genteel détente. They speak at table, play the piano for one another after dinner, but neither risks personal discourse. The colonel did, however, tell Valeska that some of his aides would be welcoming their wives and young children in Krakow, that—until other accommodations could be secured—they would be living together in her palace. As always, she was gracious, accommodating, set about to have small beds and other furniture brought up from the storage rooms, heirloom linens aired from long years’ resting in cedar chests. The colonel never mentioned his own wife, his own situation. He no longer needed to do that. By her silence, she admitted that he was correct in his thinking. She cared for him. That was enough for now. In time …

Earlier in the day, the BBC had announced the total capitulation of France to her German invaders. Street by street, house by house, the
news traveled through Krakow. Shutters banged, long medieval keys were turned in the doors, and, as though in mourning, families sat together around their kitchen tables and wept. France would not rescue them. Another sweet hope strangled, left for dead. Sixty citizens of Krakow would commit suicide that evening. There were those who would later swear the number was much higher.

The colonel had sent a note to Valeska saying that he and his men would not be “at home” for lunch or dinner, and so she’d stayed most of the day in her rooms, listening for further BBC announcements and waiting for the colonel to return so that he might somehow explain to her what it meant, this French surrender.

It is sometime after ten o’clock when she hears him enter the main hall. She puts down her book, walks out to meet him. No words. He removes his hat, pulls her close, presses his dry, soft lips against her temple. Somehow, between that morning and this evening, that which had separated them is no more.
German, Pole, war, duty
—all that remains is his mouth on her skin, her thin, weeping body in his arms.

She sends him off to bathe and change, orders supper for him, takes up her shawl and goes out into the night.
A short walk, some air, so much to talk about
.

She walks up the narrow back street behind the Czartoryski palace to the market square, finds it bedecked for the grand occasion of France’s fall with a great red forest of Nazi flags, hundreds upon hundreds of them,
yes, a strange red forest under the moon
. And there are bells. Every church in Krakow rings out the news. As though the bells know, the sounds they make are knells. All holed up against the flags and the bells and the news, there is not a Krakovian in sight. Standing along the edges of the square, her hand resting on one of the flagpoles, she watches the jackbooted boys at play, shouting, singing, cracking the green glass necks of French Champagne.

France has quit, and I am here to see the pageant of her funeral. All the while Andzelika is there. And, somewhere in France, is the little one also there? The little one. Is she alive? Where is she? What will become of her now? What has it been? Ten months? Is that what it took to bring the Franks to their knees? Whimpering. Heil Hitler
.

There will be masses of French fleeing to God knows where. Will
the convent be requisitioned? Where will they go? I shall contact Montpellier, I shall go to Montpellier, I shall see for myself, yes, Dietmar will help me. Yes, I must tell him, I will tell him this evening. No, what am I thinking? To put at peril Andzelika’s gingerly built life? I must remember who she is, who she might have become had I not protected her. Ah, such a noble mother am I. Nearly as noble a mother as I am a selfish one. What was it that I decided about myself that morning while I sat in the back of the Mariacki? How did it go? … My sins are not those of maternal ferocity but of pride. At least I am still telling myself the truth
.

Valeska stands nearer to the flagpole, one arm encircling it, resting her head against it. She tries to imagine what the child looks like now. Turned nine less than two months ago. A noise distracts her. An explosion, like fireworks.
Oh, these boys think of everything
. A second explosion, a third. The singing has stopped, there is silence and then another kind of screaming and then a voice, a single voice through a speaker shouts over all of it. What is it saying?
Long live Poland
. The Germans flee the square; she would run, too, and yet her legs are leaden. She feels faint.
I need air, too many people, too hot, the shock, the news, yes, I must get back home and wait for Dietmar in the garden. He’ll be down by now, surely he’ll be down by now
. She is falling, sliding really, her arm still clinging to the pole, trying to throw off her shawl with the other hand.
What is this warmth, this wetness gushing from my side? And from my head? Just where he kissed me
. She begins to laugh, a giddy, breathless laugh.
Ah, so this is how it shall be?
She thinks of Antoni. She thinks of the baby. She falls. Men who are living in her home see her as they run. One lifts her in his arms, the others run ahead down the alleyway, to the back entrance of the palace.

Thinking she, too, has gone to freshen up, the colonel has been playing the piano while waiting for Valeska.

Bring her to her room. Contact the medics, tell them it’s I who need them
.

Colonel, sir, it’s, it’s … The wounds are … There is chaos out there, bombs, the resistance …

Leave me alone with her
.

Colonel Dietmar von Karajan kneels by the countess’s bed. He can see the wounds now. Understands. He holds her, whispers to her. He rips the hem of the sheet to tie about her head, and he screams out to God. She opens her eyes.

Can you hear me?

Her voice is someone else’s, someone far away.

He kneels once again by her, lays his head on her breast.

I beg you to listen. My daughter …

Your daughter will be safe …

You must tell my daughter. The baby did not die, the baby did not die. I left her there with … She did not die. I left the necklace, Andzelika’s necklace. The baby did not die. Tell her. You must tell her
.