One of the reconnaissance cars—I think it was theOstmark— was just rolling back toward us from Rittergasse when Jan, my uncle, who for some time now had seemed totally inanimate, moved his right leg toward the embrasure he was supposed to be shooting through and raised it high in the air, hoping no doubt that somebody would see it and take a shot at it, or that a stray bullet would take pity on him and graze his calf or heel, inflicting the blessed injury that permits a soldier to limp—and what a limp!—off the battlefield.

A difficult position to hold for very long. From time to time Jan was obliged to relax. But then he changed his position. By lying on his back and propping up his leg with both hands, he was able to expose his calf and heel for a very considerable period and vastly improve their prospects of being hit by an aimed or errant bullet.

Great as my sympathy for Jan was and still is, I could easily understand the temper it put Kobyella in to see Postal Secretary Bronski, his superior, in this desperate, not to say ludicrous posture. The janitor leapt to his feet and with a second leap was standing over us. He seized Jan’s jacket and Jan with it, lifted the bundle and dashed it down, up down, up down; dropping it for good, he hauled off with his left, hauled off with his right; then, still not satisfied, his two hands met in mid-air and clenched into one great fist that was going to crush my presumptive father when—there came a whirring as of angels’ wings, a singing as of the ether singing over the radio. It didn’t hit Bronski, no, it hit Kobyella, Lord, what a sense of humor that projectile had: bricks laughed themselves into splinters and splinters into dust, plaster turned to flour, wood found its ax, the whole silly nursery hopped on one foot, Käthe Kruse dolls burst open, the rocking horse ran away—how happy it would have been to have a rider to throw off!—Polish Uhlans occupied all four corners of the room at once, and at last, the toy rack toppled over: the chimes rang in Easter, the accordion screamed, the trumpet blew something or other, the whole orchestra sounded the keynote at once, as though tuning up: screaming, bursting, whinnying, ringing, scraping, chirping, high and shrill but digging down into cavernous foundations. I myself, as befits a three-year-old child, was in the safest spot, directly under the window, as the shell struck, and into my lap, as it were, fell the drum. No holes at all and hardly a crack in the lacquer. Oskar’s new drum.

When I looked up from my new possession, I saw that I would have to help my uncle, who was unable by his own resources to get out from under the heavy janitor. At first I supposed that Jan too had been hit, for he was whimpering very realistically. Finally, when we had rolled Kobyella, who was groaning just as realistically, to one side, Jan’s injuries proved to be negligible. His right cheek and the back of one hand had been scratched by broken glass, and that was all. A quick comparison showed me that my presumptive father’s blood was lighter in color than the janitor’s, which was seeping, dark and sticky, through the tops of his trouser legs.

I wondered whether it was Kobyella or the explosion that had ripped and twisted Jan’s pretty grey jacket. It hung down in tatters from his shoulders, the lining had come loose, the buttons had fled, the seams had split, and the pockets had been turned inside out.

Don’t be too hard on my poor Jan Bronski, who insisted on scraping his belongings together before dragging Kobyella out of the nursery with my help. He found his comb, the photographs of his loved ones—including one of my poor mama; his purse hadn’t even come open. He had a hard and not undangerous time of it, for the bulwark of sandbags had been partly swept away, collecting the skat cards that had been scattered all over the room; he wanted all thirty-two of them, and he was downright unhappy when he couldn’t find the thirty-second. When Oskar found it between two devastated doll’s houses, and handed it to him, Jan smiled, even though it was the seven of spades.

We dragged Kobyella out of the nursery. When we finally had him in the corridor, the janitor found the strength to utter a few words that Jan Bronski was able to make out: “Is it all there?” he asked. Jan reached into Kobyella’s trousers, between his old man’s legs, found a handful and nodded.

We were all happy: Kobyella had kept his pride, Jan Bronski had found all his skat cards including the seven of spades, and Oskar had a new drum which beat against his knee at every step while Jan and a man whom Jan called Victor carried the janitor, weak from loss of blood, downstairs to the storeroom for undeliverable mail.

Though losing more and more blood, the janitor was becoming steadily heavier. Victor Weluhn helped us to carry him. Victor was very nearsighted, but at the time he still had his glasses and was able to negotiate the stone steps without stumbling. Victor’s occupation, strange as it may seem for one so nearsighted, was delivering funds sent by money order. Nowadays, as often as Victor’s name comes up, I refer to him as poor Victor. Just as my mama became my poor mama as a result of a family excursion to the harbor breakwater, Victor, who carried money for the post office, was transformed into poor Victor by the loss of his glasses, though other considerations played a part.

“Have you ever run into poor Victor?” I ask my friend Vittlar on visiting days. But since that streetcar ride from Flingem to Gerresheim—I shall speak of it later on—Victor Weluhn has been lost to us. It can only be hoped that his persecutors have also been unable to locate him, that he has found his glasses or another suitable pair, and if it isn’t too much to ask, that he is carrying money again, if not for the Polish Post Office—that cannot be—then for the Post Office of the Federal Republic, and that, nearsighted but bespectacled, he is once more delivering happiness in the form of multicolored banknotes and hard coins.

“Isn’t it awful,” said Jan, supporting Kobyella on one side and panting under the weight.

“And the Lord knows how it will end,” said Victor, who was holding up the other side, “if the English and the French don’t come.”

“Oh, they’ll come all right. Only yesterday Rydz-Smigly said on the radio: ‘We have their pledge,’ he said. ‘If it comes to war, all France will rise as one man.’ “ Jan had difficulty in maintaining his assurance until the end of the sentence, for though the sight of his own blood on the back of his hand cast no doubt on the Franco-Polish treaty of mutual defense, it did lead him to fear that he might bleed to death before all France should rise as one man and, faithful to its pledge, overrun the Siegfried Line.

“They must be on their way right now. And this very minute the British fleet must be plowing through the Baltic.” Victor Weluhn loved strong, resounding locutions. He paused on the stairs, his right hand was immobilized by the wounded janitor, but he flung its left counterpart aloft to welcome the saviors with all five fingers: “Come, proud Britons!”

While the two of them, slowly, earnestly weighing the relations between Poland and her Western allies, conveyed Kobyella to the emergency hospital, Oskar’s thoughts leafed through Gretchen Scheffler’s books, looking for relevant passages. Keyser’s History of the City of Danzig: “During the war of 1870 between Germany and France, on the afternoon of August 21, 1870, four French warships entered Danzig Bay, cruised in the roadstead and were already directing their guns at the harbor and city. The following night, however, the screw corvette Nymph, commanded by Corvette Captain Weickhmann, obliged the formation to withdraw.”

Shortly before we reached the storeroom for undeliverable mail on the second floor, I formed the opinion, which was later to be confirmed, that in this desperate hour for the Polish Post Office and the whole of Poland, the Home Fleet was lying, nicely sheltered, in some firth in northern Scotland, and, as for the large French Army, that it was still at luncheon, confident that a few reconnaissance patrols in the vicinity of the Maginot Line had squared it with Poland and the Franco-Polish treaty of mutual defense.