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eyes of the child.
    “We can stay inside. We can be quiet. There must be a way,” Gretel said.
    “All the ways are over.” The priest didn’t look at the girl.
    Magda shook her head. “Stalingrad held fast. One hundred thousand Germans captured.”
    “Sent to Siberia like the Poles. God help them.”
    “God damn them.” Magda stopped rocking.
    They sat until Gretel felt the tears coming. She choked them back. Weak people weren’t good for anything. Crying twice in two days. She had to stop.
    “It will end, Piotr. I see it coming.”
    “And you can be here when it does. Think. You can sit here and wait for the end.”
    “Someone in the village could tell about Grandmother.”
    “But they haven’t so far. No one has told. Even Jedrik, who pointed out the Jews for a sack of potatoes, is afraid to point out the priest. The village would kill Jedrik if he turned me in and I died, but I can’t save you if you keep these Jews.”
    How does he know we’re Jews? Gretel thought. They always seemed to know. It wasn’t their accent. She and Hansel spoke good Polish. No one had used Yiddish in their home. Father had hated it when she repeated a Yiddish word heard from others.
    “My children will be citizens of the world,” her father always said. “They will speak perfect Polish. Perfect German. Then English and French when they are older.”
    Gretel put her arm around Hansel. She remembered her father arguing with someone—someone who wanted them to learn Yiddish—but how did everyone always know about the Jewishness? What could it be?
    “The girl is blond.”
    “The boy has dark eyes. Curly dark hair.” He shook his head. “And he must be circumcised.”
    The priest stepped to the sleeping platform. Rolling Hansel over, he fumbled with the boy’s pants. Before the man could lower them, Gretel fell on his arm and bit him. He shrieked and shook her off like a dog.
    “You can’t look at him.” Gretel was screaming.
    Magda didn’t move.
    “He’s circumcised. I told you. How the hell do you hide that?”
    Magda was silent for a minute and then she smiled. “My great-niece. The crazy one. Our sister’s granddaughter.”
    “You haven’t seen her in years. She’s probably dead.”
    “She was always crazy. Joined any group that would have her.”
    “So?” He rubbed his arm and glared at Gretel.
    “So we will say that she joined the Karaites.”
    He stood silent and then his jaw dropped. He understood.
    “She joined the Karaites while she was pregnant and they told her to have the boy circumcised because the Karaites believe that should be done even though they are Christian. She was such a fool. Of course she did it. She’d do whatever anyone said. She was mixed up with the Karaites and had the boy.”
    “So you’ll explain the circumcision by claiming he was with the Karaites? Half the Jews in Poland must be claiming this. And why aren’t the children with their crazy mother now?”
    “Because she was sent into Germany to work on a farm. She used to work on that farm near Warsaw. Do you remember? And she couldn’t take the children so she sent them to me.”
    “And if she turns up in the village?”
    “Who will travel east with the Russian wolves creeping down on us? Everyone with a brain will go west.”
    “She never had a brain. It would be like her to arrive now.”
    “And you only need identity cards for children over eleven. The boy looks no more than six. She looks about ten.”
    “But they would need—” He stared at her and she smiled, amused at his panic.
    “You could get them.”
    “I won’t.”
    “Two baptismal certificates. Zbigniew would take a picture of them standing in their communion outfits. Pictures of the little Karaites getting ready to eat God.”
    “I’m sitting the war out in this backwater. I can’t take any more chances.”
    “And you helped shovel the dirt when they shot the mayor and the Jews.”
    “What good would my death have done?”
    “All your