The Polish Officer

by the introduction of cylinders of compressed hydrogen with open valves. Locomotives were disabled by the addition of an abrasive to the lubricating system. Russian iron ore was seeded with bombs that exploded while the ore was traveling down chutes into German smelters. When railroad tracks were mined, the first mine blew up a train, the second a rescue train, the third a repair train.

The Germans didn’t like it.

These untermenschen were not to be permitted to interfere with the harmonization of German Europe. A message was sent to the Poles: the faculty of Cracow University was called to a meeting, then arrested en masse. It was thought to be the first time an entire university had been arrested. But a few nights later, on the Silesian border, a blue flash, a fiery spray of tank-car metal, five vats of flame towed through the darkness by a terrified engineer. Fuck you.

28 March, 3:40 a.m. De Milja woke suddenly. He listened, concentrated. First the strange, whispery silence of a city under curfew. Then a board creaked in the hallway.

So, 9 mm from the nightstand, safety thumbed off. He sat up slowly, sighted on the crack where the door met the jamb. The knob turned delicately, a cautious hand on the other side. De Milja took a breath and held it.

Madame Kuester. In a silk robe, hair in a long braid. “Don’t kill me, please,” she said. He understood only by watching her mouth move, her voice barely made a sound. He lowered the gun. “Germans,” she said. Gestured with her eyes. She walked down the hall to her room, he followed, in undershirt and shorts. He stood close to her in the small room, could smell the laundry soap she washed with. The shade moved slightly in the air, the window behind it open an inch. From the roof across the narrow street, a hushed “Ocht-svansig, Ocht- svansig,” then a brief hiss of radio static. Eight-twenty, then, he thought. Meaning I’m in place, or proceed to apartment, or they’re all asleep, or whatever it meant. Now de Milja’s decision had been made for him: orders were specific, the response detailed; and he was not to permit himself to be taken alive. “Get dressed, please,” he said.

He walked down the hallway, tapped lightly at the door of the master bedroom. He heard the man and his wife breathing deeply inside, opened the door, had finally to lean over and touch the man on his bare shoulder. They made love tonight, he thought. The man was immediately awake, saw de Milja and the 9 mm and understood everything.

He went back to Madame Kuester’s room. When he opened the door she was naked, standing in front of an open bureau drawer. He knew this profile—the curve of her abdomen, flat bottom, heavy thighs. Her head turned toward him. She didn’t exactly pause, skipped a single beat perhaps, then took underwear from the drawer and stepped into it. He wanted to hold her against him, something he had never done before. There were family noises in the hall; the children, the parents, an angry word. “Best to say good-bye,” she said.

“Good-bye,” he said. He couldn’t see her eyes in the darkened room.

He hurried back to his room, put on a sweater, wool pants, heavy shoes, and a raincoat. The gun fit in the raincoat pocket. From inside a book he selected an ausweis—German work pass—and other identification meant for emergencies, as well as a packet of zloty notes and some gold coins. The family and Madame Kuester were waiting for him at the front door.

The bolt and lock mechanisms were heavily oiled, just a soft click and de Milja was looking out at the landing. A current of chilly air from the staircase meant that the street door was standing open. This was not normal. De Milja turned, silently let the others know what had happened. The reaction was calm; the father held a large military revolver, his thirteen-year-old son had its twin. The man smiled and nodded gravely. I understand.

Three flights below, somebody tried to walk silently through the lobby. Others followed, one of them stifled a cough. They could have climbed the stairs quietly if they’d taken off their boots, but the SS didn’t do things like that, so de Milja and the family could hear them coming. When they came around the curve of the staircase onto the second floor, de Milja took the 9 mm out of his pocket and climbed the iron rungs of a ladder that led to a hatch that opened onto the roof. He tested the hatch with his gun hand, moving it only enough to make sure it wasn’t secured from the other side. He was reasonably sure there were German police on the roof.

They reached the floor below. They weren’t very careful about noise now, de Milja could hear the heels of their boots and the sound of leather belts and holster grommets and breathing deepened by excitement and anticipation. Then they pounded their fists on a door and yelled for somebody to open up, the guttural German rolled and echoed up the open staircase and rang on the tile landings. The door was flung open, knob hammering the wall, then there were shouts and running footsteps and a wail of terror as the downstairs neighbor was arrested.

They had, de Milja calculated, at most an hour.

The middle-aged couple who lived below would be taken to Szucha Avenue headquarters, a sergeant would put down basic information and fill out forms, and when the interrogators finally got busy they would realize that this was not Captain Alexander de Milja or the man in the brown raincoat or whatever description they had. Then they would come back.

There was, of course, at least the mathematical possibility that the police had not made an error, but those who indulged themselves in that kind of thinking were no longer alive in Poland in the spring of 1940.

A few minutes after five in the morning, when the curfew ended, the wife, both children, and Madame Kuester left the apartment with false identity cards and a wicker basket on wheels they used for shopping. Moments later, they came to the side street and turned right. Which meant, to de Milja looking out the window, that German police remained on guard in the lobby, checking papers as the tenants left the building. Five minutes later, de Milja was alone—the former customs official had walked out the door of his apartment, probably never to see it again. He too turned right at the side street, which confirmed the earlier signal, and touched his hair, which meant the Germans were checking closely. At 5:15, de Milja climbed the ladder, cautiously raised the hatch, then hoisted himself out onto the roof.

The dawn was a shock after the close apartment—cold air, dark blue sky, shattered red cloud in streaks that curved to the horizon. He took a moment to get his bearings, smelled cigarette smoke nearby, then knelt behind a plaster wall at the foot of a chimney. Somebody was up here with him, possibly a German policeman. He held the 9 mm in his right hand, pressed the fingertips of his left hand against the tar surface of the roof. He could feel somebody pacing: one, two, three, four, five. Pause. Then back again. Everything de Milja knew suggested a police guard on the roof—the raid, the document control at the front door. Germans were thorough, this was the sort of thing they did. He wanted to see for himself, but resisted the temptation to rise up and look around—the roof was cluttered; sheets hung on clotheslines, chimneys, ventilation pipe outlets, two tarpaper-roofed housings that covered the entries to staircases.

A few feet away, across a low parapet and above a narrow alley, was a fire escape on the sixth floor of the building next door. From there, he had several choices: climb in an apartment window, descend to the alley, or go up to the roof, which abutted two neighboring buildings, one of them a factory with heavy truck traffic in and out. All he had to do was jump the space above the alley.

Down in the street, a tramcar arrived, ringing its bell, grinding to a stop, then starting up again. He heard the clop of hoofbeats—perhaps the wagon that delivered coal—and the high/low siren of German police wagons as they sped through the city streets. The air smelled of coal smoke and onions frying in fat, and he could see the morning star, still sharp, but fading in the gathering daylight. He heard the rasp of a window forced up, he heard a woman laugh—shrill, abandoned, it was so funny she didn’t care how she sounded.

Turning his head, he saw a woman appear at an open window in an adjacent building. Her apartment was one story above the roof, so he found himself looking up at her. She wore an old print dress with the sleeves rolled up, an apron, and a kerchief with the knot tied in the middle of her forehead. Her face was determined—here it was just after dawn and she was cleaning her house. She poked a dustmop out the window and gave it a good bang against the sill, then another, just so it remembered who was boss.

When she saw de Milja, she stared as though he were an animal in a zoo. Of course, he thought. What she sees is a man with an automatic pistol in his hand, kneeling behind the base of a chimney. Hiding behind the base of a chimney. Hmm. Probably a criminal. But he’s not alone on the roof. From where she stood—she gave the mop a desultory rap just to keep up appearances—she could see another man. This man was pacing, and smoking a cigarette. Perhaps, if God wills, de Milja thought, he’s wearing a uniform, or if he’s in civilian clothes maybe he has on one of those stupid little hats with alpine brushes the Germans liked.

De Milja watched the woman, she stared back shamelessly, then looked away, probably at the pacing man.