Despite the awfulness of the changes, it still felt good to be out and have the sunshine warm my face and to stretch my legs on such a beautiful evening. I had walked the streets of the Old Town every day I could remember of my nineteen years, first with my father as a child and later on my own. Its features were the topography of my life, from the medieval Barbican fortress and gate at the end of Floriańska Street to Wawel Castle seated high atop a hill overlooking the Wisła River. Walking, it seemed, was the one thing that neither time nor war could take from me.

I did not stop at the cafés, though. Once I might have sat with my friends, laughing and talking as the sun set and the lights went on for evening, sending pools of yellow cascading against the pavement. But there were no nighttime lights now—everything was dimmed per German decree to disguise the city against a possible air raid. And no one I knew made plans to meet anymore either. People were going out less, I reminded myself often as the invitations that had once been plentiful dwindled to nothing. Few could purchase enough food with ration cards to entertain at home either. Everyone was too caught up in their own survival, and company was a luxury we could ill afford.

Still, I felt a pang of loneliness. My life was so quiet with Krys away and I would have liked to sit and talk with friends my own age. Brushing the feeling aside, I circled the square once more studying the shop windows, which displayed fashions and other wares almost no one could afford anymore. Anything to delay going back to the house where I lived with my stepmother.

But it was foolish to stay on the street much longer. The Germans were known to stop people for questioning and inspection with increasing frequency as night fell and the curfew drew closer. I left the square and started down the grand thoroughfare of Grodzka Street toward the house just steps from the city center where I had lived my entire life. Then I turned onto Kanonicza Street, an ancient and winding way paved with cobblestones that had been smoothed by time. Despite the fact that I dreaded encountering my stepmother, Ana Lucia, the wide town house we shared was still a welcome sight. With its bright yellow facade and well-tended flower boxes in the windows, it was nicer than anything the Germans thought a Pole deserved. Under other circumstances it surely would have been confiscated for a Nazi officer.

As I stood in front of the house, memories of my family danced before my eyes. The visions of my mother, who had died of influenza when I was a toddler, were the least clear. I was the youngest of four children and had been jealous of my siblings, who had so many years with our mother, whom I had scarcely known at all. My sisters were both married, one to an attorney in Warsaw and the other to a boat captain in Gdan´sk.