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PARTISAN REVIEW
come back and arrest you. May God Almighty bless you and keep
you in His mercy!"
For a moment she was silent. Then solemnly she made a big
sign of the cross over my head. On her otherwise ordinary face ap–
peared an expression of nobility . I looked around for the last time,
my eyes resting on the cheap, unframed pictures of the other saints
in the room. I pitied her and tried to cheer her up . I assured her that
I was the good Catholic girl she knew, that I would stay with her. I
had to go out again, I said , but I would be back in an hour.
"See you soon, Aunt Aniela!"
I never saw her again. She must be long dead . Sometimes I am
obsessed by the thought that I am perhaps the only one who
remembers her. May she rest in peace .
I left the apartment and walked fast to escape the policeman,
who might have been following me. It ran through my head that the
other Zofia, my double, was in the same fix. I guessed what had
happened. I knew how forgers operated. I was lucky to get out
before the policeman returned. But I didn't know where to go. I
rapidly reviewed the short list of my friends and acquaintances in
Warsaw, something I had to do often . I had to be prepared for a
crisis that might arise at any time. Now I think about those friends
with some embarrassment : I was always considering how useful they
might be to me. Yet I feel that I am not a person inclined to take ad–
vantage of others.
No one on my list was in a position to help me. It was some
consolation that Mrs. Uklejska or Marysia could put me up for a
night or two-no longer-and even that stay might endanger them.
I had to find a shelter right away . My thoughts were scattered . Sud–
denly, as in the flash of a camera, the room where I had lived in my
gymnasium
days emerged from my memory - much to my surprise,
since I hadn't thought about it for a long time. It was a room in the
apartment of a widow who made her living by taking in lodgers.
One of them was Nina Nieszawska, an orphan living with her
aunt while she went to business school. She was very popular. Her
aunt wouldn't let her go out with men, but trusted me. I regret to say
that I betrayed her confidence. Nina and I would leave the apart–
ment together , ostensibly to go to the movies, but we would separate
at the corner and she would join one of her boyfriends. Later we
would meet in front of the house and return together . Everyone was
pleased with this arrangement.
Nina was Jewish, and I had no idea what had happened to her.
But I remembered meeting a couple of her Polish boyfriends . There
