Sophie's Choice - William Styron [232]
“And for the same reason, I suppose?”
“Yes.” Why couldn’t Wanda accept her decision as final, lay off, leave her alone? Her persistence was maddening. “Wanda,” she said softly, “I don’t want to press the point any more than I have to. It’s embarrassing for me to repeat what should be evident to you, because I know you’re basically a sensitive person. But in my position—I say it again—I can’t risk it, with children—”
“Other women in the Home Army have children,” Wanda put in abruptly. “Why can’t you get that through your head?”
“I told you before. I’m not ‘other women’ and I’m not in the Home Army,” Sophie retorted, this time with exasperation. “I’m myself! I have to act according to my conscience. You don’t have children. It’s easy for you to talk like this. I cannot jeopardize the lives of my children. They’re having a hard enough time as it is.”
“I’m afraid I find it very offensive of you, Zosia, placing yourself on a level different from the others. Unable to sacrifice—”
“I’ve sacrificed,” Sophie said bitterly. “I’ve lost a husband and a father already, and my mother is dying of tuberculosis. How much do I have to sacrifice, in the name of God?” Wanda could scarcely be expected to know of the antipathy—call it indifference—which Sophie harbored toward husband and father, dead in their graves these past three years at Sachsenhausen; nonetheless, what she had said comprised a telling point of sorts, and Sophie detected in Wanda a consequent moderation of tone. A quality that was almost wheedling entered her voice.
“You wouldn’t necessarily be in a very vulnerable position, you understand, Zosia. You wouldn’t be required to do anything truly risky—nothing remotely like what some of the comrades have been doing, even myself. It’s a matter of your brain, your head. There are so many things that you can do that would be invaluable, with your knowledge of the language. Monitoring, their shortwave broadcasts, translating. Those documents that were stolen yesterday from that Gestapo van in Pruszków. Let’s get to the point about this right now. They’re worth their weight in gold, I’m certain! It’s something I could help do, certainly, but there are so many of them and I have a thousand other things on my mind. Don’t you see, Zosia, how incredibly useful you could be if we could just have some of those documents delivered to you here, quite safely—no one would suspect.” She paused, then said in an insistent voice, “You must reconsider, Zosia. This is becoming indecent of you. Consider what you can do for all of us. Consider your country! Consider Poland!”
Dusk was coming on. From the ceiling a tiny lightbulb pulsed spiritlessly—lucky tonight, often there was no light. Since dawn Sophie had been shifting piles of tar paper, and she was aware now that her back was hurting her more even than her swollen and infected thumb. As usual she felt unclean, begrimed. With tired, gritty eyes she brooded out across the desolate cityscape, over which the sun never seemed to cast a glimmer. She yawned an exhausted yawn, no longer listening to Wanda’s voice, or rather, no longer hearing the actual words, which had become strident, singsong, hectoring, inspirational. She wondered where Jozef was, wondered if he was safe. She knew only that he was stalking someone in another part of the city, his piano wire in a lethal coil beneath his jacket—a boy of nineteen bent upon his mission of death and retribution. She was not in love with him but she, well—cared for him intensely; she liked the warmth of him in bed beside her, and she would be anxious until he returned. Mary Mother of God, she thought, what an existence! On the ugly street below—gray and grainy and featureless like the worn sole of a shoe—a platoon of German soldiers tramped into the gusty wind, the collars of their tunics blowing, rifles slung at the shoulder; listlessly she watched them pass the corner, turn, disappear up a street where but for an intervening bombed-out building she knew she could have seen the steel-and-iron curbside public gallows: it was as functional as a rack upon which secondhand dealers displayed used clothes, and from its horizontal bar citizens of Warsaw beyond counting had twisted and hung. And still hung and twisted. Christ, would it never end?