Mila 18 - Leon Uris

Simon Eden was calm. It did not matter much any more, Simon thought. His parents, his sister and brother were gone. The years as a Labor Zionist organizer had taught him that when the fountains of idealism ran dry one weighed the odds without emotion and accepted reality. This was the end. Trapped in a coffin with rats and spiders. There had been no sweetheart, really. A marriage ended in failure. To be the wife of a Zionist organizer, one had to be a woman like Sylvia Brandel. There had not even been a sweetheart like Gabriela. He envied Andrei. Simon’s only marriage was to Zionism.

They were coming down the roof with ropes around their waists. Andrei prayed as he held his machine pistol ready, his finger quivering on the trigger. There was only one hope.

Perhaps we are so far out on the edge they won’t come down, he thought.

An hour passed. Then two, then three.

At last the hammering above and below them stopped.

The relief from the tension brought on a new realization of physical agony. Their bodies had been cut to a blissful numbness. Chris mumbled hallucinations. They stretched one by one and shifted their positions slightly and massaged themselves and each other to restore circulation.

They had to be quiet; the Ukrainians were still up there. The terror on the streets was unabated.

Wolf played a chess game in his mind. It was the most magnificent jeweled board one could imagine. The black squares were made of solid gold and the white of ivory, each pawn and piece carved of a different precious gem. Move the pawn ... no, the bishop. He tried to think. Then the board would become muddled and the opponent’s chessmen turned to rats and spiders. Why can’t I keep the board straight? Why? I’ve played blindfolded before! The rats ate his chessmen and he could not move his hands to help them. Stop eating my chessmen! Rachael ... Please don’t let me think of Rachael. I’ll cry if I do.

Andrei licked his lips. Food! Oh, look at it. Deborah, you shouldn’t have cooked so much. You cook just like Momma. The gefilte fish is just right. So tasty.

Andrei sniffed. He came out of his trance slowly. Smoke! The brick chimney next to him was becoming warm. German efficiency. Many fireplaces in the ghetto had false coveys for hiding places. This was countered by burning fires in them so any bricked-up Jews would be smoked out. Their hiding place turned into a stifling furnace. The sweat gushed from their bodies, driving them deeper into agony. Whiffs of smoke slithered into the eaves through the crumbled mortar. Andrei gagged and twisted his head to the slit in the eaves to try to suck in a whiff of pure air.

“The smoke is coming through that one down there!” he could hear someone shout “Mark it off the list.”

Andrei closed his eyes again and dreamed of food.

The high-pitched multi-thousand-cycle cries of bats.

Simon’s dream of cold and wet made him urinate.

Andrei opened his eyes. He could hear the flapping wings and the vibrations. Dream or real? Dream or real? Dream or real? Oh God, I’m hungry. Tiny droplets of light sparkled off and on, off and on. Andrei looked through the slit in the boards. Outside, a glaring, artificial light. He turned over again and watched the sparkling overhead. They were beams of searchlights pushing through cracks in the roof. It must be night. He listened for several moments. He could hear nothing on the roof.

“Simon!” Andrei dared whisper. “Simon!”

“Andrei!”

“Chris!”

“He is unconscious,” Simon said. “He passes out and comes to, passes out and comes to.”

“Wolf!”

Andrei was answered by a feeble groan. Andrei kicked against Wolf’s shoulder. “Wolf!”

The return was an incoherent babbling.

“Must be night. They’re using searchlights.”

“That’s the way I figured it,” Simon said.

Andrei looked through the boards again, squinting to see through the glare. There was still a concentration of SS at Mila 19. He groped around for his weapon and toyed with the idea of breaking out of the entombment and firing at the searchlights. No, he’d be shot off the roof in seconds.

“I guess we’re no worse off than those poor bastards in the bunker,” Andrei said. “At least they’re not looking for us.”

“Nothing to do but wait,” Simon said.

“Yeah ...”

And then quiet once more as they heard the steps of men patrolling the roof over them, complaining about their bad fortune of nighttime duty.

Nothing to do but wait. Andrei slumped back, hoping for a misty dream to take him where there were plates piled with food.

“I didn’t catch your name.”

“I know your name, Miss Rak. Like so many, I am an admirer of the work of your late father, so my name is unimportant. You can just snap your fingers and say, ‘Hey you,’ and I’ll know you are addressing me.”

“You do dance, Lieutenant?”

“As a matter of fact, I am an excellent dancer, but frankly, I do it only as an accommodation.”

Gaby! Gaby! I am afraid! Gaby! I am so afraid!

Whistles!

Andrei forced his eyelids apart. I must be dead, he told himself. I am nowhere. In the sky. In hell. I am dead. There was no movement in his body. No feeling. No pain.

But then the cold sent a chill through him and his stomach knotted with hunger.

Like hell I’m dead! He tried to move his arms. Numb. Neck and shoulders without feeling from the pressure of the beams. First my fingers ... just my fingers first. He drew them up like claws, back, forth, back, forth; then he shook his wrists. His fingers scratched against his leg and sides, over and over to make some feeling return. His body tingled as he tore at it harder and harder. He pinched himself again and again and slapped his face. Inch by inch circulation flowed.

“Simon!” he croaked.

“Andrei!”

“The others?”

“Out cold. Neither of them has spoken for two hours. I've been counting seconds. It must be day again.”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you see down on the street?”

His head felt like a lead ball. He pushed it to the crack. The searchlights were gone. It was misty out. Germans were still all over the street.

“They’re still down there.”

“I think they’ve left the roof. I heard them ordered down. No sounds for over fifteen minutes.”

“Think it may be a trick?”

“We’ve got to take a chance,” Simon said. “We can’t hold out here another day.”

Andrei rolled over on his back. Sharp needles of pain greeted his effort to raise his arms over his head. He fished around for the key tile and wiggled it. He tugged desperately. It slid away, letting in a show of light, nearly blinding him. Andrei pulled the other five tiles loose. He drew himself up on all fours, his knees resting on a pair of beams, and shoved the upper part of his body through the hole.

“Clear! Simon, it’s clear!”

He pulled himself outside to the roof and crouched against the chimney, reaching in until he found Wolf’s head. Straining with every sinew, he slid Wolf over the rafters until his body appeared beneath the opening. Next Chris was pushed by Simon until Andrei could hook onto him.

Simon jammed past the two unconscious, prostrate bodies. Simon and Andrei looked at each other. Their faces were swollen and misshapen by bug bites, their clothing ripped to shreds. Blood and bruises were everywhere, and layers of filth hid their features. They stared like strangers.

“Do you look like hell,” Andrei said.

“You’re no lily of the valley, Androfski.” Simon looked at his watch and held it against his ear. “Thirty hours we’ve been in there.”

Andrei looked at Simon again and began laughing. And Simon laughed too. They burst into a hysterical, uncontrolled laughter in each other’s arms until they ached and tears fell down their cheeks. And it ebbed slowly, each shaking his head alternately. Andrei wiped his Schmeisser clean and counted the clips of ammunition, then got to his knees and reached down and slapped Wolf’s face.