How It All Goes Down
- Allegedly, it's now 1944.
- "Nothing had changed" (31.1).
- R.I.P. Hamster, you don't count.
- Even though we're told nothing had changed, we're then told that "most Guests has already left to join the army or escape" (31.4). Okay.
- Jan and Antonina get word that the Polish Uprising could happen at any minute.
- That minute is now, and Jan leaves to fight.
- Antonina stays home, like Nicole Kidman in Cold Mountain, waiting for Jan to return.
- "For twenty-three nights she forced herself to stay awake" (31.19).
- Randy Gardner's 11-day record without sleep has nothing on that.
- One day, a waking nightmare occurs.
- Germans invade the house and pull guns on Antonina and her baby.
- As punishment for the Uprising, Hitler has ordered his soldiers to kill Poles.
- Antonina is about to become one of them.
- First, the soldiers lead Ryś and his friends away and shoot them.
- Antonina and the baby are next.
- But Antonina uses her magic mind powers to say, "Calm down! Put the guns down!" (31.36).
- Soon, the soldiers call back Ryś and his friends. They didn't shoot them, after all.
- It was a joke.
- Ha ha ha. Oh, Nazi humor.
- Another day, soldiers arrive to loot the house.
- But again, Antonina uses her magic mind powers to snap the leader out of it.
- Antonina places her hand on the soldier's shoulder (say that five times fast) and says, "Not allowed! Your mother! Your wife! Your sister! Do you understand?" (31.52).
- Like a dog whacked in the nose with a newspaper, the soldier stops stealing furniture. And he never pees on the carpet again.
- Not only that—the solider also gives Antonina a ring that likely came from a dead Polish soldier.
- Later, a German officer enters the house while Antonina is playing the piano. He asks her to play "the Star-Spangled Banner" of all things, and she complies. He sings along, and then he leaves. Weird.
- The zoo should be renamed "Home of the Brave."