"A boy whose name in English would have been Richard asked me to call him that through the interpreter. He didn't want his Polish name; he'd thrown it away. He said he wanted me to accompany him to one of the huge gardens I had noticed as we approached the mansion. I thought he was nine or so. I was told he was fourteen.
We went through the French doors of the dining room. It was nearly dark now, but there was a rose-colored light on some of the mountain slopes. He held my hand as we walked along a partly cleared path, snow-laden branches of shrubbery leaning toward us, the bare branches of winter-blackened trees above. It was a somber, frozen, lonely place, the gelid heart of winter. Then he ran a few feet ahead of me and, with his arms and legs, brushed the snow from what I mistook as a column that had once supported a mythological or heroic statue. It was a very large bird bath."
~ Paula Fox
"Children of the Tatras"
The Coldest Winter: A Stringer in Liberated Europe
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/106394.The_Coldest_Winter
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