Mila 18 - Leon Uris

“It’s a deal,” he whispered.

“Let’s have the details.”

Andrei sat down opposite Max and held his face in his hands. “He got picked up in the Old Town Square carrying an Aryan Kennkarte made out for a fictitious Stanislaw Krasnodebski. He was sent out as a contact for a pickup from one of our girls from Krakow. Now the Germans hauled in forty, fifty people. Mass questioning. No doubt they’ve looked at his penis and know he’s Jewish. We’ve got reason to believe several Jews were grabbed in the dragnet.”

“One of my boys was taken in on the same roundup,” Max said, and added ironically, “He isn’t as lucky as Brandel. Doesn’t have his friends.”

“So, he goes on a story of being Hershel Edelman from Wolkowysk. If we’re lucky, he hasn’t been identified.”

“He’ll need more than luck with Sauer working him over. I’ll find out what his status is. If he is under suspicion we can’t touch him at Gestapo House. That will only endanger him. Sauer doesn’t take bribes. Just hope the boy doesn’t crack. We have to wait until he is transferred.”

Andrei nodded. Max stood up.

“Max ... I know the Big Seven can put us out of business, but if there’s a double cross you’ll get it first from me, personally.”

Chapter Twenty-four

EIGHT DAYS PASSED.

Rachael Bronski waited in her Uncle Andrei’s flat twenty-four hours each day, resisting consolation, eating only enough to keep her alive.

Each time Andrei walked in and shook his head the shock recoiled through her like the jagged glass on the top of the wall. She kept her eyes open in vigil until she collapsed from exhaustion, and then only a few nightmare-filled hours’ respite could be found.

She twitched and sweated on the bed and woke up with her heart thumping and the sweat pouring into her eyes, and Wolf would be standing there at the foot of the bed, gory and dismembered, and she would cry out the horror within her and then start her slow, zombie-like pacing of the room.

All of this silly war of morality I fought with him. All this modesty—all this fear ... Wolf was locked up in that terrible place. I have sent him to his grave, unloved. I have sent him to his grave, unloved. If Andrei comes through the door and tells me Wolf is dead, then I must die too.

Rachael developed a superhuman sharpness for sound. From four flights up she could hear the door of the lobby open and close. Each time it did she would walk to the door of the flat and lean against it and begin to count footsteps.

It took sixty steps to get to Andrei’s flat.

She would count. Sometimes the sound of footsteps would stop on the first landing or the second or third. She could tell if they were climbing stairs or walking in a corridor.

She could tell if their sound was taking someone up or down.

The ninth day.

She washed her face with cold water and fixed her hair and sat by the window. The door opened and closed in the lobby. Rachael listened and began her count.

... ten ... eleven ... twelve ...

The footsteps had reached the first landing.

... sixteen ... seventeen ... eighteen ...

She was able to distinguish between footsteps as they rose higher. The flat, weary shuffle was a man. The sharp sound was a woman’s heels. The soft sound, the child.

... thirty-three ... thirty-four ... thirty-five ...

Two men! Two men walking up slowly. Everyone walked slowly these days.

... forty-three ... forty-four ... forty-five ...

Her heart began to race. Two men on the third-floor landing. Oh God! Please don’t let them go into a flat down there. Please, God! Please make them come up to this floor. Please, God! I have never heard two men come up to the fourth floor! Please! Please!

... fifty-one ... fifty-two ... fifty-three ...

Rachael backed away.

... fifty-nine ... sixty

The door opened

Andrei walked in ... someone behind him.

“Wolf!”

He walked in slowly and took off his cap. Rachael pitched forward into his arms and fought off the consuming blackness that took hold of her.

For many, many moments she was too terrified to look up. Was this another dream?

No ... no ... no dream. She looked up. He was fine. Just a scar on his cheek. And then she allowed herself the luxury of breaking wide open in convulsive tears.

“Rachael,” he whispered, “I am all right. Please don’t cry. I am all right. ...”

Andrei left them, closing the door behind him.

Alex and Sylvia sat in their room, ghost-faced, drained of life. Neither of them had spoken a word for an hour since Wolf had left to go to Rachael.

Andrei knocked softly and entered.

“Dr. Glazer examined him. None of the dog bites are infected. He’ll be all right.”

The bit of information brought forth a new burst of crying from Sylvia. And then the baby shrieked and Sylvia picked him up and clutched him to her breast and rocked him back and forth, oblivious of Alex’s words of consolation.

Alex nodded to Andrei to leave Sylvia alone. He tiptoed from the room, both of them retreating to his office. Alex began berating himself.

“Stop sniveling,” Andrei demanded. “He is a courageous boy.”

“Where is he now?”

“Don’t you know?”

“Should I?”

“He is with his girl.”

“His girl?”

“My niece.”

“Oh, I didn’t know.” Alex began berating himself again for being such a bad father that his own son would not confide his love life.

“Shut up, Alex, the boy is alive and safe.”

Alex kept rambling. “All these eight horrible days I said it was right to get Wolf out. We have bought freedom for our people before. Rodel cost us nearly two thousand when they took him to the Pawiak Prison, and he isn’t even one of ours. The Communists didn’t even pay me back for Rodel’s release. It was all right, buying Wolf out. We would have done the same for any of our people.”

“You want to hear it, I’ll tell you!” Andrei raged. “It was not all right! You should have left your son to die before crawling in front of Max Kleperman!”

“Don’t talk like that, Andrei!”

Andrei snatched him from his chair and grabbed his lapels and shook him as though he were weightless. “Grovel! Beg Max Kleperman for mercy! That three thousand dollars could have bought guns to storm the Gestapo House and take your son out like a dignified human being!”

Alex fell against him and wept, but Andrei slung him into his chair. “God damn you, Alex! God damn you! Open your goddamned precious journal and read to me about the Jewish massacres in the Soviet Union!”

“For God’s sake, leave me alone!”

“I want money! I want to buy guns!”

“No—never. Never, Andrei. We keep twenty thousand children alive—not one zloty for guns.”

Alexander Brandel gasped violently for air as the room whirled around him. He had never seen the anger of the big man who glowered over him. Cornered and beaten, his soul cried out instinctively for the lives of the children.

“I’m through,” Andrei hissed.

“Andrei,” Alex cried pathetically.

“Roast in hell!”

“Andrei!”

The door slammed on his plea.

Andrei Androfski wandered in a fog, aimlessly through the ghetto streets. It was done. There was no turning back. He walked and walked and walked in a daze that shut out the sight of corpses and the pitiful moans of the child beggars or the brutal clubs of the Jewish Militia.

And he found himself standing in the lobby of his apartment house before the bank of mailboxes. His hand groped instinctively in slot 18. He pulled out two armbands. Two white armbands with blue stars of shame. The kids were still upstairs. Wolf and Rachael. He shoved the armbands into the slot and dug around in his pocket. Two bills. A hundred zlotys each. Always when he plunged lower and lower one word kept him from reaching the bottom—“Gabriela.” Two hundred zlotys. Enough to get him to the Aryan side. He needed her desperately.