five-day drive from Cracow to Warsaw soon became a garbled fading memory. The breakdown of the water pump that halted them for half a day on a deserted back road in a forest, until Byron, tinkering with it in a daze of illness, to his astonishment got it to work; the leak in the gas tank that compelled them to take great risks to buy more; the disappearance of the hysterical bride from the hayfield where they spent one night, and the long search for her (she had wandered to another farm, and fallen asleep in a barn); the two blood-caked boys they found asleep by the roadside, who had a confused story of falling out of a truck and who rode the last thirty kilometers to Warsaw sitting on wooden slats on the sizzling hood of the Fiat — all this dimmed. But he always remembered how ungodly sick to the stomach he was, and the horrible embarrassment of his frequent excursions in to the bushes; Natalie’s unshakable good cheer as she got hungrier, dirtier, and wearier; and above all, never to be forgotten, he remembered the hole in his breast pocket where the passport had been, which seemed to throb more than the gashes in his ear and his scalp, because he now knew that there were Polish officers capable of ordering him taken out and shot, and soldiers capable of doing it. Following Jastrow’s directions, he wound and doubled on stony, muddy roads to avoid towns, though it lengthened the journey and played hell with the disintegrating car.
They arrived in the outskirts of Warsaw in the chill dawn, crawling among hundreds of horse-drawn wagons. All across the stubbled fields, women, children, and bent graybeards were digging trenches and putting up tank barriers of tangled iron girders. The buildings cluttered against the pink northeast horizon looked like the heavenly Jerusalem. The driver’s immense wife, squeezed against Natalie for days and nights in an intimacy the girl had never known with another human being, smelling more and more like an overheated cow, embraced Natalie and kissed and hugged her. It took three more hours before the boys jumped off the hood and ran away down a side street. “Go ahead, go in quickly,” the mushroom dealer said to Natalie in Yiddish, stepping out of the car to kiss her. “Come and see me later if you can.”
When Byron said good-bye, Berel Jastrow would not let his hand go. He clasped it in both his hands, looking earnestly into the young man’s face. “
Byron laughed. “That’s a big order, but I’ll pass it on, Berel.”
“What did he say?” Berel asked Natalie, still holding Byron’s hand. When she told him Berel laughed too, and then astonished Byron by giving him a bear hug and a brief scratchy kiss.
A lone marine stood watch at the closed gates. Gray sandbags lined the yellow stucco walls, ugly X-shaped wooden braces disfigured the windows, and on the red tile roof an enormous American flag had been painted. All this was strange, but strangest was the absence of the long line of people. Nobody but the marine stood outside. The United States embassy was no longer a haven or an escape hatch.
The guard’s clean-scraped pink suspicious face brightened when he heard them talk. “Yes, ma’am, Mr. Slote sure is here. He’s in charge now.” He pulled a telephone from a metal box fastened on the gate, regarding them curiously. Natalie put her hands to her tumbled hair, Byron rubbed his heavy growth of red bristles, and they both laughed. Slote came running down the broad stairway under the embassy medallion. “Hello! God, am I ever glad to see you two!” He threw an arm around Natalie and kissed her cheek, staring the while at Byron’s dirty blood-stained head bandage. “What the devil? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. What’s the news? Are the French and British fighting?”
“Have you been that out of touch? They declared war Sunday, after fussing at Hitler for three days to be nice and back his army out of Poland. I’m not aware that they’ve done anything since but drop leaflets.”
Over a wonderful breakfast of ham and eggs, the first hot food they had eaten in days, they described their journey. Byron could feel his racked insides taking a happy grip on this solid boyhood fare and calming down. He and Natalie ate from trays on the ambassador’s broad desk. Washington had ordered the ambassador and most of the staff out of Poland when the air bombing began; as the only bachelor on the number three level, Slote had been picked to stay. The diplomat was appalled at Byron’s tale of abandoning his passport. “Ye gods, man, in a country at war! It’s a marvel you weren’t caught and jailed or shot. That you’re a German agent would be far more plausible than the real reason you’ve been wandering around. You two are an incredible pair. Incredibly lucky too.”
“And incredibly filthy,” Natalie said. “What do we do now?”
“Well, you’re just in it, my love. There’s no getting out of Poland at the moment. The Germans are overrunning the countryside, bombing and blasting. We have to find you places to stay in Warsaw until, well, until the situation clarifies itself one way or another. Meantime you’ll have to dodge bombs like the rest of us.” Slote shook his head at Byron. “Your father’s been worrying about you. I’ll have to cable him. We still have communication via Stockholm. He’ll let A.J. know that Natalie’s at least found and alive.”
“I am dying for a bath,” Natalie said.
Slote scratched his head, then took keys from his pocket and slid them across the desk. “I’ve moved in here. Take my apartment. It’s on the ground floor, which is the safest, and there’s a good deep cellar. When I was there last the water was still running and we had electricity.”
“What about Byron?”
Byron said, “I’ll go to the Methodist House.”
“It’s been hit,” Slote said. “We had to get everybody out, day before yesterday.”
“Do you mind,” Natalie said, “if he stays with me?”
Both men showed surprise and embarrassment, and Byron said, “I think my mother would object.”
“Oh, for crying out loud, Byron. With all the running into the bushes you and I have been doing and whatnot, I don’t know what secrets we have from each other.” She turned to Slote. “He’s like a loyal kid brother, sort of.”
“Don’t you believe her,” Byron said wearily. “I’m a hot-blooded beast. Is there a YMCA?”
“Look, I don’t mind,” Slote said, with obvious lack of enthusiasm. “There’s a sofa in the sitting room. It’s up to Natalie.”
She scooped up the keys. “I intend to bathe and then sleep for several days — between bombings. How will we ever get out of Poland, Leslie?”
Slote shrugged, cleared his throat, and laughed. “Who knows? Hitler says if the Poles don’t surrender, Warsaw will be levelled. The Poles claim they’ve thrown the Wehrmacht back and are advancing into Germany. It’s probably nonsense. Stockholm Radio says the Nazis have broken through everywhere and will surround Warsaw in a week The Swedes and the Swiss here are trying to negotiate a safe-conduct for foreign neutrals through the German lines. That’s how we’ll all probably leave. Till that comes through, the safest place in Poland is right here.”
“Well then, we did the sensible thing, coming to Warsaw,” Natalie said.
“You’re the soul of prudence altogether, Natalie.”
As the trolleybus wound off into the smaller residential streets, Byron and Natalie saw more damage than they had in Cracow — burned-out or smashed houses, bomb holes in the pavement, an occasional rubble-filled street roped off — but by and large Warsaw looked much as it had in peacetime, less than a week ago, though now seemingly in a bygone age. The threatened German obliteration was not yet happening, if it ever would. The other passengers paid no attention to Byron’s bandage or growth of beard. Several of them were bandaged and most of the men were bristly. A thick human smell choked the car.
Natalie said when they got out, “Ah —
Slivers of sunlight through the closed shutters made Slote’s flat an oasis of peaceful half-gloom. Books lining the sitting room gave it a dusty library smell. Natalie flipped switches, obviously quite at home in the place. “Want to wash up first?” she said. “Once I get in that tub there’ll be no moving me for hours. There’s only cold water. I’m going to boil up some hot. But I don’t know. Maybe you should find a hospital, first thing, and get your head examined.”
After the phrase was out of her mouth, it struck them both as funny. They laughed and laughed and couldn’t stop laughing. “Well, while we still both stink,” Natalie gasped, “come here.” She threw her arms around him and kissed him. “You damned fool, abandoning your passport to protect some dopey Jews.”
“My head’s all right,” Byron said. The touch of the girl’s mouth on his was like birdsong, like flowers, exhausted and filthy though they both were. “I’ll clean up while you boil your water.”
As he shaved she kept coming into the bathroom emptying steaming kettles into the cracked yellow tub, humming a polonaise of Chopin. The music had introduced the noon news broadcast, in which Byron had understood
