En el Norte, four of my grandchildren wait for me to answer the phone. I do not yet know it is them. They are in custody at a facility. Ordered to read from a paper saying these things, something written for the lawyer.      I hear some of it. The rest means they wait for me to hear all of it. I must steady my legs and stand as the kind of grandfather they need me to be, a hard man in a suit and a hairy chest that sweats but does not smell; a casual cold and reasonable man, the kind willing to fluff a few feathers if need be, someone who can do many things all very well, but certain and quick and find out the person in charge and deal with him, someone who can show them sense. My grandchildren want me to answer to that paper like that man.      Maybe they hope I understand when my oldest says my real name again, not my stage name. I do not know many people who know my real name, but they like me. I tell them they always like me when they remember, a...

 We strolled into a Gestapo office in central Warsaw and faced three self-assured Aryan. They were easier to snuff than a cigarette, Renia K. wrote later.  Dragon sisters we called ourselves. We guised as farm girls with braids, kerchief tied around. Took them and like sacks of potatoes left them in the shade. The blond dye and chutzpah, rage, a deep buried hope, a housemaid job, belts for the contraband, an iron will. Women so unlike me--they were the fight to my flight--hope was daily, a put on like lipstick you reached down for it, the rest of your face obsessively cluttered in a jute bag.  I was sixteen when I left Hungry for Palestine, but had come back to Europe. The "courier girls" confused me, the active pride of them at parties held by a smuggler. They had money too, and fake IDs, plenty of jokes to relieve fear, and said  marmalade jars were perfect for grenades. One said my smile wasn't fake enough and I should practice looking at my Nazi killers directly ...

Once upon a time in a beaten land, where a village was lost, it's patron dragon disturbed and forelorn, raising hateful vengeance on the pirates who stole her eggs, but that is another story, and this, the story of what happened to the pirate left behind, who stayed in the Dragon's lair, who could not at first draw his eyes from the raw pale thing--was it a walrus tusk? While he stood looking, let us try to answer. Legend has it there was a mystical bone that might restore one's health if he were daft with despair, repair one who felt a barren desert to know themself a fruitful, lush garden--or as it were, it might show a success of an inner struggle yet born out.  As this was indeed ancient, the relic bone in the dragon's lair had passed many a mouth. Animals buried it, dug it out again or they fought, strongest wins, but this is the story of how the bone became a gift bone, how it came to have magic property. In the time of old, the fancy, the well-to-do, as always, m...

A raw bone turned under foot. The pirate saw it and stopped.  "What are you getting at!" said the loud one. He was still. The bone was something. A kind feeling came into him and he sunk.  It was in his hands and he had tears on his face. What had he seen? The loud one reacted first. They had to all of them be quick, not knowing when the She-dragon would return. On the boat, at the first glance the Captain saw it had been true. The boat 'twere weighed down with the eggs. "Had ye no room then? for where is the man called Justin?" "He was beside himself" the loud one said truthfully. "There be strange things in the lair of the dragon," he told them when they still listened. Justin gradually felt a throbbing in his head. He saw above him the cave and he grew chilled. "Have no fear man," spoke the Dragon. The Dragon had only just returned, and though she smelled his presence she had followed the scent of her eggs to the water, roaring. ...

Once she raised two eggs on a cliff on the moor. Word spread the Dragon had not been seen. Was she gone? Had she taken ill? Who would protect them! Armed bandits were the first to plan their raid on the nearby villagers. First they sent out a search party. As they neared, they saw she was in her lair. "Why are you here? I should ask you," the Dragon said. "I am the dragon but I fly no more. I fly no more yet am the dragon still." They thought she said, "I cannot fly now." They reported she was roosting eggs. That she did not fly. "Were they golden?" "How do you know?" "Is it true they have magic power?" On they talked until they believed it must be worth the risk. Now the Captain was a pious pirate, the best of the lot. He had risen as chief of them having some schooling in him before he ran from home and lettered, he added arithmetic, and map reading, and had made himself useful until he knew several of the seven seas. He was...