Parade

Page 30

23 and lawyers, so they don't have to struggle like me, and when I'm old ixxxxxxxKXXKKX I have some one to care for my body and write my will, and they have some^one to bring their children to, to tell them the story of how a family becomes xx happy and wealthy." He brought his hands down and examined them, rubbing the callouses. It sounded pretty good. But not to Esther. "You don't carry the babies." "Of course, that's- what you dol I can't have babies. You have the babies. That's how this worksl" He was xxxx mad enough now to justify a good drunk, so he left. But he didn't get anymore babies for a few years. Meanwhile the War broke out in Europe and Esther received a letter from her mother telling xxxxixxxxxxxxxxr her that Esther's first cousin and closest childhood £x±nx friend, Edju, had joined the XHXXXXXXXXX Polish Resistence. The ResistenceI Edju had never resisted anything in his life, other than work. It had been years since Esther had heard from Edju. How he must have changed. "Edju," Esther wrote, "I'm proud of you, but be careful, and write." "Don't worry Esther," Edju responded. "We're all registered with"'Empire. It's the safest place to be, and after the war, we will be patriots." Two months later the Austrians invaded the Resistence's big •odka-Fest in Warsaw, put them all in the army and moved them up to the front for trench fodder. In the first battle •*.-i k n, •pjiijjfeii. Edju surrendered to the French. "They are worse than the Austrians," Edju wrote Esther. "The French c after them comes ten loads of shit, then the rest of the human race. The food is lousy and they make me stay with the Serbs and t who are good for nothing but farting and fighting. I am a refined individual, almost an engineer. Still, the war is teaching me many languages and the French know how we Poles hate Germans and Russians, so there is hope." The French put him in the army and moved him to the front. Esther got her next letter from a German prison camp. "The Germans get a lot of bad propaganda," said Edju. "They are very clean people and their bad food is very similar to our bad food. And when they heard what the French did to me after capturing me from the- Am*U^iana» tho-y were axxi appalled. It's against the rules.