Mila 18 - Leon Uris

WOLF

Dearest Wolf,

I think your idea is wonderful, but you can be sure that I am not and won’t be interested in anyone else. The thought of any other boy than you touching me makes me shudder.

Love,

Your girl,

RACHAEL

A great deal of that calm and witty shrewdness that was the mark of Dr. Paul Bronski’s personality had vanished. It seemed as though he was worried all the time. At home he was often irritable and many times he snapped at the children for trifles. Deborah tried hard to compensate by comforting him, but Paul’s burdens were running ahead of her powers to transmit sympathy. As the deputy under the chairman, Boris Presser, Paul had to carry out the German directives, deal directly with both Piotr Warsinski as well as the Orphans and Self-Help Society, and was often the scapegoat for all sides. He got little or no support from Boris Presser, who was a complete robot of conformity.

Deborah waited several days after she and Rachael had had their confidential talk in order to find Paul in a proper restful mood. As they prepared for bed one night, Paul had let it be known by the innuendoes married couples develop that he desired sex. Deborah, as always, prepared to comply. It was in that moment that he seemed a little relaxed as he sat in the big chair near the bed and sipped tea and watched her put up her hair as she sat before the mirror.

As he looked at her he thought it amazing how she managed to keep herself so beautiful. Deborah worked eight, ten, twelve, and often fourteen hours in the orphanage on Niska Street. She had kept up Stephan’s studies and Rachael’s piano and she had been a good and comforting wife. There was not a line in her face, no gray in her hair, no telltale sagging of her body.

Perhaps there was envy on the part of Paul. Once Deborah had been retiring and obedient and passive. Now she seemed the stronger of the two. Paul resented his growing need for her.

Deborah twisted the long black strands of hair into tight curls on her forehead and deftly darted pins into them to hold them in place. Then she picked up the hairbrush and went into her nightly stroking exercise.

“Paul, dear.”

“Yes?”

“I have been thinking that, with both of us gone a good part of the day and conditions as they are, wouldn’t it be nice if Rachael were able to get away for a change of scenery? I could take Stephan along with me to the orphanage. There are dozens of boys his own age and he enjoys it there. ...”

Bronski furrowed his brow. “It would be nice if all of us got a change of scenery. What about your plans for Rachael to debut with the symphony? Besides, this is so much nonsense. There is no place she could go but to another ghetto.”

She watched him in the mirror out of the corner of her eye. “We could send her to the Toporol farm in Wework.”

He put his cup down. “Wework? The damned place is just a front for Zionists. The whole place is staffed by former Bathyrans.”

“But it’s healthy and there are girls her age and she will have a chance to look at trees and flowers and something other than misery.”

“You know the morals of these Zionist children.”

“No, I don’t,” snapped Deborah.

“They’re very loose.”

“Has it occurred to you that Rachael is nearly as old as I was when I met you?”

Bronski paled at the verbal slap. Then his eyes narrowed. “Just a minute. Isn’t that where the Brandel boy is?”

“Yes. And before you say another word, I think he is a fine young man who would be overly aware of not violating her. Besides, it’s something that they will have to work out for themselves whether we like it or not.”

“My, listen to the voice of modern sophistication. Have you become a free-love advocate? Are you going to spend the rest of your life throwing up to me your debauching?”

“Paul, she happens to be in love with the boy. Lord only knows they have little or no chance for a normal life, and I cannot see that it is a sin for her to want to be near him.”

He stood up abruptly. “There are other considerations. The Toporol farms are open only on a technicality. We have no guarantee the Germans won’t take a notion to raid them and ship everyone off to labor. If she is caught out there, I won’t be able to help her.”

Deborah lay down the hairbrush and spun about on the vanity bench. “Is there a guarantee they won’t come in here in the next ten minutes and haul us away? Living itself is a plain and simple day-to-day risk.”

The issue was clear. Paul would continue to retrench, to play it close, cautious. Deborah was willing to let her daughter take the risk to pursue a normal, healthy impulse.

Compromise, Paul, compromise! Caution! She had done everything but call him a coward.

He paced the floor, then spurred into one of his more frequent tantrums. “Dammit! There are nearly six hundred thousand people in this ghetto! I have to find place for four thousand new families by the end of the week! There is no space! People are sleeping in courtyards, alleyways, basements, attics, warehouses, hallways.”

“I don’t see what one has to do with the other.”

“Everything has to do with everything! I’m sick and tired of being chastised by my own wife for trying to protect my family. Isn’t it enough that I let Stephan keep on with this whim of yours to study with Rabbi Solomon? He barely escaped with his life once. Do you know one of those children caught was shot? It could have been your own son. I am still the head of this family, and that girl is not going to Wework.”

She nodded and turned and picked up the brush again and stroked her hair. More and more she saw him going down. So long as Mrs. Bronski, wife of the JCA deputy chairman, works in an orphanage and so long as his daughter plays in morale-building concerts and the status is not besmirched, that was all that really mattered. The words never left her lips. She wanted to cry that there had to be an end to the price he was willing to pay for his skin—but she merely stroked her hair and said, “Yes, Paul.”

Chapter Twenty

Journal Entry

WOLF WANTS TO COME home. I don’t know why. I thought he would be happy on the farm. Tolek says he is one of the best people out there. What could it be?

The brief marriage of convenience between Germany and the Soviet Union has been abruptly annulled. Russia was attacked last week (June 21, 1941). This year’s casualties have been Greece, Yugoslavia, Crete, and North Africa. Rumania and Bulgaria have declared war against the allies. (What allies?) The news reports that Britain is getting a fearful bombing by the Luftwaffe. London is catching it even worse than Warsaw did. Hard to believe.

The prospects of four to six million Jews in the Soviet Union in the path of Germany’s unchecked onslaught is a terrifying prospect.

ALEXANDER BRANDEL

Old Rabbi Solomon entered the headquarters of the Big Seven on the corner of Pawia and Lubeckiego streets opposite the prison. Many of the sleazy characters around the anteroom were accomplished rabbi baiters. They stared at the old man. He carried a holy dignity in his stature, almost as though he had a mystic power to invoke God’s wrath.

“Announce me to Max Kleperman,” he ordered sternly.

“Ah, my rabbi,” beamed Max. “My own holy rabbi,” he cooed to the personal guardian of his soul. Max rushed from behind his desk and pulled the old man in by the elbow, shoved him into a chair, and raced to the door and shouted, “I am with my rabbi. I am not to be disturbed for anyone. Not for a fire—not even for Dr. Franz Koenig!”

He winked to relay his fearlessness. Rabbi Solomon let him play out the role. “What can I get you? Maybe a chocolate. Hershey’s from America—or coffee, Swiss Nestlé’s, personal stock.”