The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story

CHAPTER 26

AS SPRING SIDLED CLOSER AND NATURE HOVERED BETWEEN seasons, the snow melted and a low green cityscape of garden plants arose during the day, but at night the land froze over again and moonlight glittered the walks into silver skating trails. Hibernating animals still curled up underground, waiting in suspense. The villa’s people and animals sensed the lengthening light, and when a gust of air swept indoors, it carried the mossy sweet smell that rises from living soil. The faint pink coating the treetops promised rippling buds, a sure sign of spring hastening in, right on schedule, and the animal world getting ready for its fiesta of courting and mating, dueling and dancing, suckling and grubbing, costume-making and shedding—in short, the fuzzy, fizzy hoopla of life’s ramshackle return.

But spring floated outside the small rupture in time the war had gouged. For people attuned to nature and the changing seasons, especially for farmers or animal-keepers, the war snagged time on barbed wire, forced them to live by mere chronicity, instead of real time, the time of wheat, wolf, and otter.

Confined to her bed’s well-padded prison, Antonina rose occasionally to hobble the few painful steps onto her balcony, from which she had a wide view, and could even hear the powerful noise of ice cracking on the Vistula River, a tympani signaling winter’s end. Being bedridden had slowed the world down, given her time to page through memories, and brought a new perspective to some things, while others lay beyond reach or evaded her view. Ryś spent more unsupervised time, but she reckoned him “more capable and levelheaded than any child his age should have to be.”

Older children, from youth groups aiding the Underground, had begun arriving unexpectedly, and neither Antonina nor Ryś knew who would be appearing when; though Jan had warning, he was often away at work when they floated in like clouds or just as suddenly vanished. They usually stayed in the Pheasant House for a night or two, then melted back into Warsaw’s undergrowth, with Zbyszek, a boy high on the Gestapo’s most-wanted list, lingering for weeks. It fell to Ryś, as the least conspicuous villa-ite, to deliver their meals.

Antonina and Jan never spoke of the scouts’ doings in front of Ryś, even if some appeared like sightings of rare animals, then mysteriously slipped away, and to her bafflement Ryś didn’t seem to care much, despite his usual curiosity. Surely he’d fabricated some story about them? Wondering what, she asked him if he had any thoughts about the young visitors, any opinion about Zbyszek, for instance.

“Oh, Mom,” Ryś said in the long-suffering tone children reserve for benighted parents, “I know all about it! A man can naturally understand these things. I never asked you any questions because I could see that you and Zbyszek had secrets you didn’t want to share with me. But I don’t care about Zbyszek! I have my own friend now. Anyway, if you really want to know what I think of Zbyszek—I think he’s a stupid boy!” And with that Ryś shot out of the room.

Antonina wasn’t surprised by his jealousy, which seemed only normal, but Ryś had become more secretive of late, she thought, and much less talkative. Realizing something had collared his attention, she wondered what he was up to. The only answer that rose to mind was his new friend, Jerzyk Topo, the son of a carpenter whose family had recently moved into a staff apartment on the zoo grounds. Antonina found Jerzyk polite and well behaved, a few years older than Ryś, handy with tools, a boy learning his father’s trade. Ryś admired his woodworking skills, the two shared an interest in building things, and since they lived close they played together every day. From her second-story watchtower, Antonina sometimes glimpsed them building secret shapes and talking constantly, and she felt relieved that he’d found a new playmate.

Then one day, after the boys had gone to school, Jerzyk’s mother appeared at the villa and anxiously asked Antonina if they could talk in private. Antonina ushered her into her bedroom and closed the door. According to Antonina’s account, Mrs. Topo then said:

“The boys have no idea I’m here. Don’t tell them! I don’t really know how to begin….”

Antonina began to worry—what had her son done?

Then Mrs. Topo blurted out: “I was eavesdropping on them—I’m sure they didn’t see me. And I know that’s a terrible thing to do, but how could I help myself once I got wind of what they were planning? I had to learn what they were up to. So I was quiet and listened, and I was shocked! I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. When they left I didn’t know what to do, and I decided I’d better come and talk to you. Maybe together we can figure something out!”

Antonina found the news alarming. Could Mrs. Topo be overreacting to the boys’ innocent capers? Hoping so, she said:

“Your son is such a good boy. I’m sure he wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. And Ryś is still so little…. Okay, I can watch him more closely…. But what exactly did our boys do?”

“They didn’t do anything wrong yet, but they’re planning something big.”

Antonina wrote that “my heart fell into my feet” as Mrs. Topo explained that she’d overheard the boys pledging to oust the Germans, which they believed their patriotic duty, first by hiding a bomb in a tall haystack near the Germans’ storehouse of weapons near the zoo fence.

“And under Jerzyk’s mattress,” Mrs. Topo continued, “I found one of your towels, with big red letters on it that said ‘Hitler kaput!’ They want to hang this towel above the main gate of the zoo, because there are so many Germans coming here all the time and they’re bound to see it! What are we going to do? Maybe your husband could talk to them and explain that they’re much too young to fight, and if they go through with their plan they’ll put us all in danger…. But what do you think we should do?”

Antonina listened quietly, trying first to absorb, then analyze the disturbing news that she found both noble and foolish. She assumed Ryś had concocted the idea while eavesdropping on the scouts, who were staging similar acts of sabotage. By now, not drawing attention to the bustle at the zoo had become a fine art, like sleeping with dynamite. All they needed was the boys hanging up a literal red flag.

She also wondered how she could have missed this plot of Ryś’s, and misjudged his ability to understand the grown-up world of consequences, when she’d thought she could count on his absolute secrecy, and on her ability to gauge his maturity. Her anger at him and at herself quickly turned to sadness as she realized that

instead of praising his bravery and initiative, and telling him how proud he made me, I had to punish him, and tell his father that he stole some explosives, and maybe even embarrass him in front of his friend. I knew Jan would be furious.

“Yes,” she said to Mrs. Topo, “I will ask Jan to talk with the boys. Meanwhile, it is best to burn the towel.”

That evening, she overheard her menfolk, father and son, quietly talking in a formal, military way:

“I hope you appreciate that I’m not treating you like a child, but like a soldier,” Jan said, appealing to his son’s natural wish to be taken seriously as a grown-up. “I am an officer in this house and your leader. In the military field of action, you must do only what I order, nothing on your own. If you want to continue having this kind of relationship with me, you have to swear that you won’t do anything without my knowledge. The action you planned with Jerzyk falls into the category of ‘anarchy,’ and ‘arbitrary’; and you should be punished for it—just like you would be in the regular army.”

But what punishment should a father in the role of a military leader impose on a small child in the role of a soldier? Risk isn’t shaped the same in a child’s eyes, nor can a child see as far downstream from an event, and punishment works only if both parties feel it to be fair, fairness being the gold standard of childhood.

So he said: “Maybe you want to suggest how I should punish you?”

Ryś considered it seriously. “…You can spank me,” he finally offered.

And presumably Jan did, because Antonina, in recording the scene in her diary, noted simply: “And, in this small way, our own private family Underground ceased to exist.”