The Winds of War

trousers sewed up his head. The shaving of the hair around the wound hurt worse than the actual stitching. He suggested to Natalie, when he came out, that she get her knee taped, for she was limping again.

“Oh, hell,” Natalie said. “Let’s go. We can still reach Warsaw tonight, Yankel says. I’ll get it fixed there.”

What with the tablespoon of pain-killer the doctor had given him, general weariness, and the aftermath of shock, Byron dozed. He did not know how much time had passed when he woke. On a broad cobbled square near a red brick railway station, two soldiers, rifles in hand, had halted the car. The station and a freight train were on fire; flame and black smoke billowed from their windows. Several buildings around the square were smashed or damaged; two were in flames. People were crowding around shops, passing out merchandise, carrying it off. Byron realized with surprise that this was looting. Across the square, men were pumping water at the burning railroad station from horse-drawn fire engines, such as Byron had not seen except in old silent movies. A crowd was watching all this as it would any peacetime excitement.

“What is it?” Byron said.

One of the soldiers, a big young blond fellow with a square red face marred by boils, walked around to the driver’s window. A conversation ensued in Polish between the soldier, Yankel, and Jastrow. The soldier kept smiling with peculiar unpleasant gentleness, as though at children he disliked. His scrawny companion came and looked through the yellow glass, coughing continually over a cigarette. He spoke to the big one, addressing him repeatedly as Casimir. Byron knew by now that Zhid was a Polish epithet for “Jew”; Zhid was occurring often in this talk. Casimir addressed the driver again, and once reached in and gave his beard a caress, and then a yank, apparently displeased with his answers.

Jastrow muttered something to Natalie in Yiddish, glancing at Byron. “What is it?” Byron said.

Natalie murmured, “There are good Poles and bad Poles, he says. These are bad.”

Casimir gestured with his gun for everybody to get out.

Jastrow said to Byron, “Dey take our automobile.”

Byron had a rotten headache. His ear had been nicked by the bullet, and this raw patch burned and throbbed, hurting him more than the stitched head wound. He had vague cramps, having eaten old scraps and drunk dirty water in the past two days, and he was still doped by the medicine. He had seldom felt worse. “I’ll try talking to Redface, he seems to be in charge,” he said, and he got out of the car.

“Look,” he said, approaching the soldiers, “I’m an American naval officer, and I’m returning to the embassy in Warsaw, where they’re expecting us. The American girl” — he indicated Natalie — “is my fiancee, and we’ve been visiting her family. These people are her family.”

The soldiers wrinkled their faces at the sound of English, and at the sight of Byron’s thick blood-stained bandage. “Amerikanetz?” the big one said.

Jastrow, at the car window, translated Byron’s words.

Casimir scratched his chin, looking Byron up and down. The condescending smile made its reappearance. He spoke to Jastrow, who translated shakily into French, “He says no American Navy officer would ever marry a Jew. He doesn’t believe you.”

“Tell him if we’re not in Warsaw by tonight the American ambassador will take action to find us. And if he’s in doubt, let’s go to a telephone and call the embassy.”

“Passport,” Casimir said to Byron, after Jastrow translated. Byron produced it. The soldier peered at the green cover, the English words, the photograph, and at Byron’s face. He spoke to his coughing companion and started to walk off, beckoning to Byron.

“Briny, don’t go away,” Natalie said.

“I’ll be back. Keep everybody quiet.”

The smaller soldier leaned against the car fender and lit another cigarette, hacking horrible and grinning at Natalie.

Byron followed Casimir down a side street, into a two-story stone building festooned outside with official bulletins and placards. They walked past rooms full of files, counters, and desks to a frosted glass door at the end of the hall. Casimir went inside, and after about ten minutes poked his head out and beckoned to the American.

A pudgy man in a gray uniform, smoking a cigarette in an amber holder, sat behind the big desk at the window; an officer to judge by his colored tabs and brass ornaments. The passport was open before the man. He sipped tea from a glass as he glanced at it, and tea dripped on Byron’s picture. In the narrow grimy room, metal files and bookshelves were shoved in a corner, with dirty legal tomes tumbled about.

The officer asked him if he spoke German. That was the language they used, though both were bad at it. He made Byron tell his story again and asked him how an American naval officer happened to be mixed up with Jews, and how he came to be wandering around Poland in wartime. When his cigarette was consumed to the last quarter inch, he lit another. He queried Byron hard about the head injury, and smiled sourly, raising his eyebrows at the account of strafing on the highway. Even if this were all true, he commented, Byron had been acting foolishly and could easily get himself shot. He wrote down Byron’s answers with a scratchy pen, in long silent pauses between the questions; then clipped the scrawled sheets to the passport, and dropped them into a wire basket full of papers.

“Come back tomorrow afternoon at five o’clock.”

“I can’t. I’m expected in Warsaw tonight.”

The officer shrugged.

Byron wished his temples would stop throbbing. It was hard to think, especially in German, and his vision was blurry, too. “May I ask who you are, and by what right you take my passport, and by what right this soldier tried to take our car?”

The unpleasant smile that Casimir had displayed — Casimir stood by the desk all through the interview with a wooden look — now appeared on the officer’s face. “Never mind who I am. We have to make sure who you are.”

“Then telephone the American embassy and ask for Leslie Slote, the political secretary. That won’t take long.”

The officer drank off his cold tea and began signing papers with a mutter in Polish to Casimir, who took Byron’s arm, pushed him out of the room, and led him back to the car.

The station and freight cars were pouring steamy white smoke, and a smell of wet burned wood filled the street. The looting was over. Policemen stood in front of the wrecked shops. The faces of the three women looked out tensely through the yellowed car glass at Byron. Casimir spoke to his companion, who caused the bride to shrink from the window by knocking on the glass and winking at her; then they went off.

Byron told Natalie what had happened and she recounted it in Yiddish to the others. Jastrow said they could stay the night in the home of a friend in this town. When Byron got in behind the wheel, Yankel seemed glad to retire to the back seat beside his wife.

Following Berel’s directions, Byron maneuvered to a crossroad. A large arrow pointing left, down a road through fields stacked with corn sheaves, read: WARSAW, 95 KS. Jastrow told him to turn right, along a road which led past small houses toward an unpainted wooden church. Byron, however, shifted gears and swooped left, driving out into the fields. “That’s a bad outfit back there,” he said to Natalie. “We’d better keep going.”

Natalie exclaimed, “Byron, stop, don’t be crazy! You can’t drive around among these people without your passport.”

“Ask Berel what he thinks.”

There was colloquy in Yiddish. “He says it’s much too dangerous for you. Go back.”

“Why? If we run into any trouble, I’ll say I lost the passport in a bombardment. I’ve got this hole in my head.” Byron had the accelerator pressed to the floor, and the overloaded bumping old Fiat was doing its best speed, about thirty miles an hour. Overhead the pots were making a great din, and Byron had to shout. “Ask him if it isn’t safest for you for the rest to get the hell out of here.”

He felt a touch on his shoulder and glanced around. Berel Jastrow’s bearded face was fatigued and ashen, and he was nodding.

It took them two days to go the ninety-five kilometers. While it was happening it seemed to Byron a saga that he would be telling his grandchildren, if he lived through it. But so much happened afterward to him that his