Dark Star

“Yes.”

Again the note, this time a monosyllable. Not at all typical of Vainshtok. Szara hesitated, then leaned forward, a man about to ask frank and difficult, possibly dangerous, questions.

“Oh, you know how they are,” Vainshtok said hurriedly. “Just any little thing and they turn bright red and throw a few somersaults, like the king’s ministers in a children’s book.” He laughed a little.

“Someone here?”

The question was dismissed with a shrug and a frown. “Three Jews meet in heaven, the first one says-”

“Vainshtok …”

” ‘The day I died, the whole city of Pinsk’ “

“Who asked?”

Vainshtok sighed and nodded to himself. “Who. The usual who.”

Szara waited.

“I didn’t ask him his name. He already knew mine, as he no doubt also knew the length of my schvontz and the midwife who took me from my mother. Who indeed! A Cossack in a topcoat. With the eyes of a dead carp. Look, Andre Aronovich, you’re supposed to show up in Lvov. Then you don’t. You think nobody’s going to notice? So they come around looking for you. What am I supposed to say? Szara? He’s my best pal, tells me everything, he just stopped off in Cracow to buy rolls, don’t worry about him. I mean, it was almost funny-if it wasn’t like it was it would be funny. Mind you, it was the same day the Germans finally broke into Lvov: buildings on fire, people weeping in the streets, tanks in the marketplace, that fucking swastika flying over the town hall, a few diehards sniping from the windows. And suddenly some, some apparat type appears from nowhere and all he wants to know is where’s Szara. I almost said, ‘Pardon me, you’re standing in my war,’ but I didn’t, you know I didn’t. I crawled on my belly until he went away. What do you want? Remorse? Tears? I don’t really know anything about you, not really. So I told him nothing. It just took some time to get it said.”

Szara sat back in the garden chair. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “And I was in the city that day. I saw the same things you did.”

“Then you know,” Vainshtok said. He took off his glasses and looked at them, then put them back on. “All I want is to stay alive. So I’m a coward, so now what.”

He could see that Vainshtok’s hands were shaking. He took out a cigarette and silently offered it, then lit a match and held it while Vainshtok inhaled. “Have the Germans been out here?” he asked.

Vainshtok blew smoke through his nose. “Only a captain. The day after they took the city he came around. A couple of the ambassadors went out to meet him, they all put their heads together, then he came in and drank a cup of tea in the lobby. A diplomatic crisis was averted, as the old saying goes, and the SS never showed up. Myself, I didn’t take any chances.” He patted the automatic affectionately. “Somehow I get the feeling that in certain situations the Non-Aggression Pact doesn’t quite cover somebody who looks like me. ‘Oops! Sorry. Was that a Russian Jew? Oh, too bad.’ “

” Where’d you get it? “

“You met Tomasz? The caretaker? Big white eyebrows, big belly, big smile-like a Polish Santa Claus?”

“When I arrived. He told me where you were.”

“Tomasz will get you, for a small fee, whatever you want.” Vainshtok took the pistol out of the holster and handed it to Szara. It was a blued-steel Steyr automatic, an Austrian weapon, compact and heavy in his hand.

“You get to play with it for three minutes,” Vainshtok said. “But you have to give me five marbles and a piece of candy.”

Szara handed it back. “Is there anything to eat in this place?” Vainshtok looked at his watch. “In an hour or so they serve boiled beets. Then, at dinnertime, they serve them again. On the other hand, the china is extremely beautiful, and they’re actually very good beets.”

Szara slept on a wicker couch on the sunporch. The hotel was jammed with people and he was lucky to find anything at all to sleep on. At a right angle to the couch, a Spanish consular official had claimed the porch swing for a bed, while a Danish commercial attache, one of the last to arrive from Warsaw, curled up on the floor next to a rack of croquet sets. The three of them had managed a conversation in French, talking in low voices after midnight, cigarettes glowing in the dark, in general trying to sort out rumors-the prime topic of conversation at the spa. Elements of the Polish army were said to have withdrawn to the Pripet marshes with the idea of holding out for six months while French and British expeditionary forces were organized to come to Poland’s defense. A Norwegian diplomat was believed to have been interned. This was curious because Norway had declared neutrality, but perhaps the Germans intended the “mistake” as a warning. Or perhaps it hadn’t happened at all. The United States, the Dane was certain, had declared neutrality. A special train would be organized to remove diplomats from Poland. But many diplomats from Warsaw, having taken refuge in the town of Krzemieniec, in western Poland, had been casualties of a heavy bombing attack by the Luftwaffe. The Polish government had fled to Romania. Warsaw had surrendered; Warsaw still held; Warsaw had been so obliterated by bombing that there was nothing left to surrender. The League of Nations would intervene. Szara faded away without realizing it; the quiet voices on the porch and a light patter of rain lulled him to sleep.

It was a particularly golden dawn that woke him. The distant forest was alive with amber light. How hard summer died here, he thought. It made him wonder what day it was. The seventeenth of September, he guessed, making what sense he could of the jumble of days and nights he’d wandered through. The lawns and graveled paths sparkled with last night’s raindrops as the sun came up and it was, but for a faint buzz of static somewhere in the hotel, immensely quiet. A rooster began to crow; perhaps a village lay on the other side of the forest. He looked at his watch-a few minutes after five. The Spaniard on the porch swing was lying on his back, coat spread over him like a blanket and pulled decorously up to his chin. Beneath a lavish mustache his mouth was slightly open, and his breath hissed in and out daintily as he slept. Szara caught, for just a moment, the barest hint of coffee in the air. Was it possible? Just wishful thinking. No, he did smell it. He wrestled free of the jacket tangled about him and sat upright-oh, bones-checking to make sure the valise was under the couch where he’d put it the night before. His beard itched. Today he would find some way to heat up a pot of water and have a shave.

Some campaigner he’d turned out to be. Not anymore. He was a creature of hotels now. Someone was making coffee-he was sure of it. He stood and stretched, then walked into the lobby. Anarchy. Bodies everywhere. A woman with two chins was snoring in a chair, a Vuitton suitcase tied securely to her finger with a shoelace. What did she have in there? he wondered. The silver service from some embassy? Polish hams? Wads of zlotys? Little good they’d do her now; the Germans no doubt had occupation scrip already printed and ready to spend. He moved toward the staircase and lost the scent, then backtracked into the dining room. Cautiously, he pushed open one of the swinging doors to the kitchen. Only a cat sleeping on a stove. The static was louder, however, and the coffee was close. At one end of the kitchen, another swinging door opened onto a small pantry and two women looked up quickly, startled at his sudden appearance. They were hotel maids, he guessed, pretty girls with tilted noses and cleft chins, one dark, the other fair, both wearing heavy cotton skirts and blouses, their hands red from scrubbing floors. A zinc coffeepot stood on a small parlor stove wedged into one corner, and an old-fashioned radio with a curved body sat on a shelf and played symphonic music amid the static. The maids were drinking coffee from the hotel’s demitasse cups. After Szara said good morning he pleaded for coffee. “Just tell me how much,” he said. “I would be happy to pay.”

The blond girl colored and looked down at her shoes. The dark one found him a tiny cup and filled it with coffee, adding a shapeless chunk of sugar from a paper sack. She offered him a piece of twig to use as a stirrer, explaining, “They have locked up the spoons somewhere. And of course there is nothing to pay. We share with you.”

“You are kind,” he said. The coffee was sharp and hot and strong.

“There is only a little left,” the dark girl said. “You won’t tell, will you? “

“Never. It’s our secret.” He drew an X over his heart with one finger and she smiled.

The symphonic music faded away, replaced by a voice speaking Russian: “Good morning, this is the world news service of Radio Moscow.”

Szara looked at his watch. It was exactly five-thirty, that made it seven-thirty Moscow time. The announcer’s voice was low and smooth and reasonable-one need not concern oneself too much with the news it broadcast;