Sophie's Choice - William Styron [50]
“When the German soldiers came into Cracow—this was in September of 1939—we were all shocked and scared and of course we hate this thing that was happening to us but we stayed calm and hoped for the best things. Truly that part was not so bad, Stingo, I mean in the beginning, because we had faith that the Germans would treat us decent. They had not bombed the city like Warsaw, and so we feel a little special and protected, spared. The German soldiers they had very good behavior and I remember that my father said that this proved what he had believed for so long. And that was that the German soldier was in this tradition of ancient Prussia which had the code of honor and decency and so they would never harm civilians or be cruel to them. Also, it make us to feel calm to hear of these thousands of soldiers speaking German, which to our family was almost like the native tongue. So we had this panic at the very beginning but then it seemed not so bad. My father suffered terribly over the news about what happened in Warsaw but he said we must continue with our lives in the old way. He said that he had no illusions about what Hitler think of the intellectuals but he said that in other places like Vienna and Prague many teachers in the universities was permitted to continue their work, and he thought that he and Casimir would too. But after weeks and weeks passed and anything didn’t happen, we saw that this time in Cracow was going to be okay, tolerable I mean.
“One morning that November I went to Mass in St. Mary’s church, that is the church that has the trumpets, you know. In Cracow I went to Mass quite often and went many times after the Germans came, to pray that the war be over. Maybe it sound selfish and horrible to you, Stingo, but I think mainly I wished the war to be over so I could go to Vienna with Kazik and study. Oh, naturally there were a million other reasons to pray, but people are selfish, you know, and I felt very lucky that my family had been spared and was safe, so I just wished for the war to be over so that life could be as it was in the old days. But when I prayed at Mass this morning I had a... a prémonition—yes, the same, a premonition, and was filled with this slowly mounting frightful sensation. I didn’t know what the fright was about, but in a sudden the prayer stop in my mouth and I could feel the wind blowing in the church around me, very wet and cold. And then I remembered what caused the fright, something that just came over me like a bright flash. Because I remembered that this same morning the new Nazi Governor General of Cracow district, this man named Frank, had make the faculty of the university to assemble in the cour de maison, you know, courtyard of the university, where they were to be told the new rules for the faculty under the occupation. It was nothing. It was to be a simple assembly. They were supposed to be there that morning. My father and Kazik heard about this only the day before and it appeared, you know, perfectly reasonable and no one thought about it very much. But now in this bright flash I felt something very, very wrong and I run from the church into the street.
“And oh, Stingo! now I tell you: I never saw my father or Kazik, ever again. I run, it was not far, and when I got to the university there was a vast crowd of people near the main gate in front of the courtyard. The street was closed to the traffic, and there were these huge German vans and hundreds and hundreds of German soldiers with rifles and machine guns. There was a barrière and these German soldiers wouldn’t let me pass and just then I saw this older woman I knew well, Mrs. Professor Wochna, whose husband was teaching la chimie, you know, chemistry. She became hysterical and crying and she fell into my arms, saying, ‘Oh, they are all gone, they have been taken away! All of them!’ And I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t believe it, but another wife of the faculty came near and she was crying too and she said,