Irena!”
“What are you so surprised at?” she asked, cutting him off irritatedly. “That woman is not the unhappiest person in the world. She doesn’t have to die from the fear that at any moment they can shoot her sons just because they are who they are. She at least has them, you understand? She can go on living. And us?”
“Us?” He didn’t understand at first.
“Us Jews!” she answered.
At that moment, the sound of a machine gun sounded very close to them. The cannon continued firing from the far gate.
“You didn’t used to say ‘us,’” Malecki said at last, speaking softly.
“No, I didn’t, but I have been taught. By all of you.”
“By us?”
“By you, Poles, Germans …”
“So you’re lumping us together?”
“You’re all Aryans!”
“Irena!”
“You taught me that. I only recently came to understand that everyone in the world has always hated us and still does.”
“You’re exaggerating!” he murmured.
“Not at all! And even if they don’t hate us, at best they barely tolerate us. Don’t tell me we have friends, because it just seems that way. In reality no one likes us. Even when you help us, it’s different than when you help other people …”
“Different?”
“You have to force yourself to assume a posture of generosity and sympathy, of whatever is good, humane, and just. Oh, I assure you that if I could hate Jews as much as you do, then I wouldn’t say ‘us’ and ‘you.’ But I can’t feel like that and so I must be one of them, a Jew! For who else am I supposed to be, tell me that?”
“Yourself,” he replied, but without much conviction.
She said nothing at first. She bowed her head and stood that way for a long time, again tracing invisible signs on the ground with her parasol. Suddenly she lifted her beautiful, eastern eyes toward Malecki and said in the soft tone that formerly had so often sounded in her voice:
“I am myself. But Miss Lilien from Smug no longer exists. I was told to forget about her, so I did.”
A commotion arose at the gate. People were slipping out, taking advantage of the latest break in the shooting.
“Let’s go,” Malecki said.
The German sentry at the gate urged those exiting to hurry. In a moment Malecki and Irena found themselves on the street.
Irena did not know this part of town, so she stopped, disoriented. Malecki pulled her after him in the direction of Franciszkańska Street. A few passersby were stealing this way along the rows of tenements. Shots still could be heard, sparse and far off. An open army car slowly made its way down the center of the roadway. From its running board a young officer issued orders in a loud voice to the soldiers grouped around the carousel.
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