After a long bath, she joined her cousins in a dining room “beautifully decorated with elegant furniture and objects.” Glinting light caught her eye: a framed collection of tiny teaspoons silvering on one wall, each decorated with the emblem of a different German city—inexpensive souvenirs Gutowski had collected on prewar trips. After dinner she went to the guest room and fell asleep, but at 4 A.M. she woke to the growl of truck engines just outside the house, and heard Marysia and Mikołaj running to the front window. She followed them and stood in darkness watching trucks with tarp roofs parked at Tucholski Square, surrounded by a huge crowd and German police, with other trucks pulling up. Antonina wrote that as the soldiers kept loading hostages bound for the camps, she anxiously hoped they wouldn’t cart her off, too. Deciding not to get involved, she and her cousins returned to bed, but soon a loud pounding on the door summoned Mikołaj downstairs, still in his pajamas, and Antonina worried what her family would do without her help. Suddenly German soldiers stood in the hallway and asked for her documents.
Pointing at Antonina, a soldier asked Mikołaj: “Why isn’t this woman registered here?”
“She’s my niece, the zookeeper’s wife,” he explained in fluent German. “She’s just spending the night here because their bathroom is broken; she came to take a bath and spend the night—that’s all. It’s dark and slippery out, not a good time for a pregnant woman to be on the street alone.”
As the soldiers continued inspecting the house, they moved slowly from one elegantly furnished room to another, exchanging smiles of pleasure.
“So gemütlich,” one said, a word conveying a pleasant cheerfulness. “Back home bombing raids have destroyed our houses.”
Antonina noted later that she could well imagine his sorrow. In March, American bombers had dropped 2,000 tons of bombs on Berlin, and in April thousands of planes had jousted over Germany’s once-beautiful cities. The soldiers had much gemütlichkeit to long for, though the worst still awaited them. By the end of the war, the Allies would blanket-bomb German cities, including Dresden, historic seat of humanism and architectural splendor.[85]
Antonina stood to one side and quietly watched their faces for signs of trouble as they entered the dining room, where a soldier spied the pageant of German commemorative spoons on the wall. He paused, edged closer, and then his face flashed surprised delight as he drew his friend’s attention to the rows of perfectly arranged spoons, each celebrating a different city. The soldier said politely: “Thank you, everything is fine here, we’re finished with our inspection. Goodbye!” And they left.
Thinking over events later, Antonina figured all that saved her were sentimental memories and the idea that someone in the house had German roots. Marysia’s whim of buying German souvenirs, and displaying them in the folk-art way, had spared them arrest, interrogation, perhaps death. Despite all she chose not to see, Antonina still hid valuable secrets (people, locations, contacts), and so did Mikołaj, a Catholic engineer who, with Zegota’s help, sometimes hid Jews.
At last all went to bed, and the next morning Antonina returned home, where the Guests assured her that if she and Jan could escape narrowly so often, they must live “under the influence of a lucky star,” not just a crazy one.
By the time spring came, the hibernating zoo began churning with life, trees unfurled new leaves, the ground softened, and many city dwellers arrived, gardening tools in hand, to work their small vegetable plots. The Żabińskis gave refuge to even more desperate Guests, who joined the villa, underfoot and in closets, or crept into small sheds and cages. Their lack of comforts, photographs, and family relics greatly saddened Antonina, who described them in her diary as “people stripped of everything but their lives.”
In June, Antonina affirmed life’s relentless optimism by giving birth to a little girl named Teresa, who stole center stage despite the global tug-of-war. Ryś was fascinated by the newborn, and Antonina wrote that she fancied herself back in a fairy tale about a baby princess (Jabłonowski Princess Teresa had been born in 1910), for whom gifts arrived each day. A shiny golden wicker crib, a handmade baby quilt, knitted hats and sweaters and socks at a time when wool was hard to find—these seemed “priceless treasures laden with magic spells of protection.” One very poor friend had even embroidered cloth diapers with tiny pearl designs. Antonina doted on the tokens, removing them from tissue paper, touching them, admiring them, arranging them on her comforter like icons. Couples were trying not to give birth during the war, given life’s uncertainties, and this healthy baby posed a good omen in one of the most superstitious of cultures, especially about child-bearing.[86]
According to Polish folklore, for example, a pregnant woman dared not gaze at a cripple or the baby could become crippled, too. Looking into a fire while pregnant supposedly caused red birthmarks, and looking through a keyhole doomed the baby to crossed eyes. If an expectant mother stepped over a rope on the ground or under a clothesline, the umbilical cord would tangle during childbirth. Mothers-to-be should only stare at beautiful vistas, objects, and people, and could produce a happy, sociable child by singing and talking a lot. Craving sour foods foretold a boy, craving sweets a girl. If possible, one should give birth on a lucky day of the week at a lucky hour to guarantee the baby’s lifelong good fortune, whereas a sinister day doled out hexes. Although the Virgin Mary blessed Saturdays, when any newborn automatically evaded evil, Sunday’s children could blossom into mystics and seers. Superstitious rituals accompanied the saving and drying of the umbilical cord, the first bath, first haircut, first breast-feeding, and so on. Since it marked the end of infancy, weaning held special significance:
The country women had particular times when they thought weaning was to occur. First, it was not done during the time when birds were flying away for the winter, for fear the child would grow up to be wild and take to the forest and woods. If weaning took place during the time when leaves were falling, the child would go bald early on in life. A child was not weaned during harvest time when the grains were being carefully hidden away, or it would become a very secretive individual.[87]
Also, pregnancy should stay hidden as long as possible, and not be divulged, even by the husband, lest a jealous neighbor cast the evil eye on the baby. In Antonina’s day, the evil eye, born of envy to sour and begrudge good fortune, worried many Poles, who believed a happy event invited evil and that praising a newborn cast a vicious spell. “What a beautiful baby” became so poisonous that, as antidote, the mother had to counter with: “Oh, it’s an ugly child,” and then spit in disgust. Following similar logic, when a girl got her first period it was customary for her mother to slap her. The dehexing fell mainly to mothers, who saved offspring by forgoing shows of happiness and pride, thus sacrificing what they prized dearly for what they valued most, because the moment one loved something it became eligible for loss. While to Catholics, Satan and his minions always hovered, Jews also ran a daily gauntlet of demons, the best known of which is perhaps the zombie-like dybbuk, the spirit of someone who died and has returned to haunt the body of a living person.
On July 10, Antonina finally emerged from bed, to celebrate Teresa’s birth at a small christening party. Traditionally one served braided bread and cheese on such an occasion, to dispel evil forces. Out came bacon-stuffed meat preserves, made from the carcasses of crows shot by Germans the previous winter. Fox Man cooked waffles, and Maurycy made a traditional liqueur of honeyed vodka, called pępkowa (navel). Of course, in Maurycy’s eyes, the occasion required the presence of his hamster, so Piotr joined the table and began collecting crumbs as usual, carefully checking each plate and cup, perking up his head, sniffing around, whiskers twitching, at last discovering the source of a new aroma which spirited sweetly from the empty liqueur glasses. Lifting a honey-scented glass in his tiny paws, he licked with pleasure, then went to the other glasses and imbibed until he grew drunk, as the partiers laughed. He paid dearly for the spree: the next morning, Maurycy found his companion lying stiff and lifeless on the floor of his cage.
85
In the ensuing firestorm, counting victims became impossible, though it’s now estimated that 35,000 people perished in Dresden. The rare manuscripts of eighteenth-century Italian composer Tomaso Albinoni, whose Adagio in G Minor has become synonymous with mournfulness, also vanished in flames.
86
Many Poles believed in signs and witchery. It was once common for Warsawians to read their fate in a deck of regular (not tarot) cards, or predict the future, especially marriage, by melting wax on a spoon and slowly pouring it into a bowl of cold water. Supposedly, the shape the wax took revealed one’s fate—a hammer or helmet shape told a boy he’d be soldiering soon, and a girl that she’d marry a blacksmith or soldier. If a girl dripped wax resembling a cabinet or other furniture, she’d marry a carpenter; if it looked more like wheat or a wagon, she’d marry a farmer. A violin or trumpet meant the person would become a musician.
According to Polish lore, Death appears to humans as an old woman in a white winding sheet carrying a scythe, and dogs can easily spot her. So one can glimpse Death “by stepping on a dog’s tail and looking between his ears.”