Mila 18 - Leon Uris

Good God, she was beautiful!

Chris was an experienced, sophisticated man. He was too wise to be felled suddenly like this. Yet his stability seemed shot. This strange feeling had never happened—not even with Eileen.

During the opera they were both uncomfortable in their awareness of each other. It was as though ectoplasm were leaping from the body of one to the other. There was a quick succession of stolen glances. There was the first accidental brushing of arms that made them twinge. And a few less accidental touchings.

Between the second and third acts Chris and Deborah found themselves standing away from the others, oblivious of the pomp and finery around them. Deborah turned completely pale as they stared wordlessly at each other.

The bell rang and the audience began to drift in to their seats.

Deborah suddenly broke and turned. Chris automatically touched her elbow. “I must see you,” he blurted. “Please phone me at Swiss News at the Bristol.”

Andrei called across the lobby for them to hurry.

Four days passed.

Chris started each time the phone rang. Then he began to resign himself to the fact that she would never call him and that he had done something foolish. Flirtations were flirtations, but this wasn’t. There was in this none of the game men and women play. It was something serious from the very first second. Even though he realized she would not call, he could not shake that strange feeling.

“Hello ...”

“Is this the Swiss News Agency?”

“Yes ...”

“Christopher de Monti?”

“Speaking.”

“This is Deborah Bronski.”

Chris’s hand became wet on the phone.

“I will be in the Saxony Gardens in an hour, along the benches beside the swan lake.”

They were both quiet and confused and feeling guilty and foolish as they found themselves sitting opposite each other.

“I feel absolutely silly,” Deborah said. “I am respectfully married and I want you to know I have never done anything like this before.”

“It is all so strange.”

“I cannot lie about the fact that I wanted to see you again and I don’t know why.”

“You know what I think? I think that you and I are a couple of magnets made out of some sort of unique metal. I think I was irresistibly pulled to Warsaw.”

And then they were awkwardly quiet, groping for a logical thought.

“Why don’t we take a walk,” Chris said, “and talk about things?”

She lay awake that night. And she met him again and she lay awake again. All of those little things that make a romance the most wonderful exploration of one human by another had been denied Deborah. Now suddenly she was flooded with them. Flooded with emotions she never believed she would have or knew existed.

The touch of a man’s hand. The little duels of small talk to inflict small hurts on each other. The instantaneous thrill the moment he appeared coming down the path. The pangs of jealousy. The color of eyes, the way his dark hair fell over his forehead, the long strong hands, the sensitive expressions, the lanky careless stature.

The pain of being away from him.

The first kiss. She did not know what a kiss was. She did not believe feelings from a kiss were part of the human experience.

“Deborah, I love you.”

Each new adventure was like nothing that had ever happened to her before.

“I am not quite certain I know what love is, Chris. I do know that seeing you is wrong and we will get into trouble if we keep it up. But I know I want to see you, regardless. Because ... being away from you is becoming more and more unbearable. Is this what love is, Chris?”

Chapter Twelve

Journal Entry

TODAY, MY SON WAS born. Susan Geller was in attendance with Dr. Glazer from our orphanage. Sylvia came through beautifully for a woman of forty.

Outwardly, I must exhibit unabashed joy. Inwardly, I am worried. This is a bad time for a Jewish child to be born.

Moses is a common name, but I think the historian in me weighed my decision. The first Moses was also born in an era of duress, and when Pharaoh ordered all Jewish male infants slain he was hidden in the bulrushes. With this sentimentality and much luck, Moses Brandel will come through the difficult days ahead.

ALEXANDER BRANDEL

Despite the austerity and the outlawing of religious ceremonies, nothing could diminish the collective happiness of the Bathyrans. Moses Brandel was born to be spoiled by them all. He was their baby, and they were damned well going to have a blowout at the bris.

Tolek Alterman closed down the farm and brought in all the workers, thirty boys and ten girls, to Warsaw with an extravagance of food.

Momma Rosenblum took charge of cooking the traditional dishes. Rabbi Solomon would personally conduct the prayers at the ceremony.

The event took place at the Writer’s Club on Tlomatskie Street, near Alex’s flat, which the Orphans and Self-Help Society had “leased” as an agency.

On the eighth day after his birth Moses Brandel was passed around on an ornate velvet pillow from relative to relative, from Bathyran to Bathyran, and finally ended up in the arms of his godfather, Andrei Androfski.

Down the street, the Great Tlomatskie Synagogue was boarded up at the doors and windows and guards posted around it, but in the Writer’s Club a covenant with God was made by this child in a ceremony over four thousand years old from the command in Genesis, “He that is eight days old among you shall be circumcised, every male throughout your generations.”

As in ancient times when Abraham circumcised Isaac, symbolic of a covenant with God, so did Finkelstein, the professional mohel, circumcise Moses Brandel. It is probable that Finkelstein did a better job, as he had had far more practice. He had been mohel at some two thousand brisim.

Little Moses lost his composure and shrieked.

“Blessed are you, Lord our God, Master of the Universe, who have made us holy with your commands, and have commanded us to bring Moses, the son of Alexander and Sylvia, into the covenant of Abraham our father,” chanted Rabbi Solomon.

When Moses’ ordeal was over, the infant was returned to his mother in their flat down the street and the celebration began.

“Mozeltoff!” everyone congratulated the proud father.

“Mozeltoff!”

And the toasts began.

And singing.

And dancing.

And soon the Writer’s Club reeled under the impact of a dancing hora ring. The “proud father” was pulled into the center, and one by one the young Bathyran girls whirled with him around the circle in unison with the clapping and stamping. He danced and danced until he could dance no more. It didn’t take much wine to get him high; he had been heady since the birth of the baby.

At last he staggered from the dance floor, sweating and gasping for breath.

Ervin Rosenblum and Andrei hooked their hands under Alex’s arms and dragged him off to a side room, where he flopped down, wiped his face, and fanned himself.

“Why do Jews have to make such a tsimmes about the birth of a son?” Alex asked.

“Our kids have been pent up so long, they are about to explode with tension,” Rosy said. “This party is doing everybody good.”

“So!” roared Andrei. “How does the new father feel now?”

“At my age, to have a son is an unexpected bonus.”

Then he looked up glumly from Andrei to Ervin. They could hear the hilarity outside, but they were never a second away from the times. Even in the middle of the celebration it lurked in Alex’s mind. “Have you seen the new set of German directives?”

They nodded.

“So, they may as well celebrate tonight.”