THERE WAS A JEW IN GUATEMALA named Peter, I told Tamara, trying not to look at her white ass, but his name wasn’t really Peter. He was a Polish Jew, a Jew from Polish Galicia named Yosef. He spent the war years in Poland, never leaving Poland, traveling freely through the towns and forests and mountains of Poland, living among the Nazis under a false name. Someone else’s name. The name Peter Zsanowsky. He adopted a Polish identity and the Polish name of a lumberjack named Peter Zsanowsky, and masked, camouflaged, lying, he managed to save his life. In Guatemala, until the day he died, even on his tombstone, he always called himself Peter.
THE JEWISH GREAT-GRANDFATHER of a friend of mine, I told Tamara, trying not to look at her smooth round calves, managed to get out of Germany using identification papers he’d taken from a German soldier, a Nazi soldier whose last name was Neuman. He escaped, disguised as a German soldier whose last name was Neuman. He escaped, disguised as one of the German soldiers who wanted to kill him. He passed himself off as someone else and that was how he survived. When he made it to Argentina, he decided to keep the name, the name of his executioner and his savior. Neuman.
THE FAMILY OF POLISH WRITER Jerzy Kosin´ski, I told Tamara, trying not to look at the exposed side of her breast, escaped the Nazis by passing themselves off as a Catholic family. At the end of 1939, the family, still using the name Lewinkopf, fled Łódź, the city of my grandfather. In fact, the house of the Lewinkopfs (on Gdan´ska Street) was only a few blocks from where my grandfather lived (on Zeromskiego Street), and I have no trouble imagining young Jerzy Kosin´ski, still named Józef Lewinkopf, playing dominoes with my grandfather, or playing soccer with my grandfather, or playing hide-and-seek among the trees of Poniatowskiego Park with my grandfather. The Lewinkopfs finally arrived in Dabrowa Rzeczycka, a country town in the south of Poland. They assumed the identity of a Catholic family whose last name was Kosin´ski. They rented an apartment. They hung crucifixes and pictures of the Virgin Mary on the wall, and let them gather dust and cobwebs so they wouldn’t look new or recently hung. Young Jerzy went to church with his father every Sunday. He studied the catechism. He was an altar boy. He made his First Communion. He was careful never to pee outside, in front of his Catholic friends. And that’s how he managed to save himself, pretending to be part of a Catholic family, disguised as an altar boy, and from then on — until the day he died fifty years later in a New York bathtub — using the last name Kosin´ski.
MY POLISH GRANDFATHER, while a prisoner in Block 11 of Auschwitz, I told Tamara, trying not to look at the mole on the curve of her lower back, met a Jewish prisoner they called Kazik, who was one of the men in charge of removing the bodies of those shot at the Black Wall. Gnadenschuss, my grandfather explained. A single shot to the back of the head. They called him Kazik, but his name was Kazimierz Piechowski, my grandfather told me. He was a Pole, from Tczew. He was the ankle guy — the one in charge of dragging all the fresh bodies from the Black Wall, one by one, by the ankles, to the Auschwitz crematorium. In June of 1942, together with three other prisoners, Kazik escaped through the main gate of Auschwitz, dressed as an SS second lieutenant, an Untersturmführer. In a stolen black uniform, a crisp uniform that hid his emaciated body and the number tattooed on his forearm (918), Kazik disguised himself as an Untersturmführer in the SS, shouted in German the orders that an Untersturmführer in the SS would shout, saw the guards immediately open the main gate of Auschwitz (ARBEIT MACHT FREI), and disguised as his own enemy, lying, managed to gain his freedom.
A FEW YEARS AGO, I told Tamara, trying not to look at the slightly raised red mound between her thighs that might have been the gentle rise of her warm vulva, I met an old Polish Jew who had escaped the Nazis dressed as a little Catholic girl.
Discreetly, I made a slight adjustment to my bathing suit.
He told me that one winter day, dressed as a girl, he’d traveled with his parents to a monastery in the middle of a forest, on the outskirts of Warsaw. It was snowing that day in the forest and the monastery, in the snow, amid snow-covered trees, looked enchanted and blue. His parents handed him over to some Catholic nuns at the monastery, along with a fake birth certificate and a fake baptismal certificate, and said good-bye. He was then five years old. He spent the rest of the war living in that monastery on the outskirts of Warsaw, disguised as a Catholic girl, dressed and groomed and made up like a Catholic girl. With golden braids. In a skirt. Living for years among Catholic girls. Kneeling and making the sign of the cross and praying in Latin, along with all the other Catholic girls.
I sat up a bit. I adjusted my bathing suit once again.
The first days or weeks at the monastery, he told me, he’d kept his left hand closed tight, balled into a little fist. The nuns tried to open it, to uncurl it, but he just squeezed it harder, tighter, as though preparing to hit someone. He ate like that and bathed like that and prayed like that and even slept like that, with his left hand balled into a little fist under the pillow. Just before he’d arrived at the monastery, his father, kneeling in the forest in the snow, had taken his left hand and had written there, on his palm, in black ink, his real name. His boy name. His Hebrew name. His Jewish name. So he wouldn’t forget. So he could keep it secret. His father, kneeling there, had named him in black ink between the lines of his palm, in secret, in the middle of a forest, on the outskirts of Warsaw. And as he was telling me this, he raised his hand, I said to Tamara. He looked like a witness swearing to tell the truth, I said. But after days or weeks of living in the monastery, his real name had already faded away.
Tamara opened her mouth slightly, perhaps to say something or ask something, but I didn’t let her.
I remember that the only time his voice trembled, I said, was when he recited, in a benevolent tone, a tone full of affection, the names of each of the nuns. He still knew the names of each one of the fifteen or twenty nuns who’d taken care of him. I also remember that he described to me in detail the inside of that monastery in the forest, I told Tamara, but I don’t remember anything about his description. He might have described the dark hallways and the ancient walls and the vaulted ceilings of the monastery. He might have described all the religious imagery in the monastery, and the hallways echoing constantly with Latin hymns. But I don’t remember. I remember only his gaze. Because while he was describing it to me, he kept staring upward. An enigmatic, pious gaze, a frightened gaze. As if he could still see that monastery from the inside, or were still inside that monastery now. As if he’d never left that monastery in the forest, I said to Tamara, that monastery that had imprisoned him for years but had also saved his life. Because it was his gaze, I said, his fearful and almost childish gaze, that allowed me to imagine what he felt living there, imprisoned, captive not only to those dark damp walls but also to another language, other prayers, other clothing, another identity. And I was also able to imagine everything else. His parents letting his hair grow long enough to make two golden braids; dressing him in a pink dress and a girl’s shoes; putting a touch of makeup on his lips and cheeks; writing his name on the palm of his hand; persuading him in Yiddish that his name was no longer that one, the one written in black ink on the palm of his hand, but Teresa or Natasza or Magdalena; his parents saying good-bye in front of the enormous door of the monastery in the snow, perhaps both covered in snow, perhaps knowing they would never see him again, perhaps weeping at the sight of that confused, pretty Catholic girl.