Mila 18 - Leon Uris

“Like Faust? My soul to the devil?”

That’s right Chris. It will be steep.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

ANDREI WAITED FOR TWO restless, mood-filled weeks before he could corner the man known to him as Roman, the Warsaw commander of the fledgling underground Home Army.

Time and again Andrei had to stifle his desire to go back into the ghetto with his friends. He drank heavily in the evenings, and when his mind became fuzzed he was filled with remorse. He had been intolerant of Alexander Brandel’s struggle. He had acted wrongly to friends who believed in him.

He thought about everything since the war had come. Bullheaded ... angry. Perhaps he was no good for a command again. There was a time when he had settled down and moved about Poland on mission after mission. He had pieced together a secret press. He had acted with a cool head and a quick mind.

But always, anger surged. Rebellion against tyranny. He was overpowered by this drive to throw off his containment and fight.

And Gaby. He was remorseful about her too. What kind of life had he given her? He had taken her from a world in which she thrived and placed demands upon her, giving little or nothing in return. When the command in the Home Army comes, maybe I will get away from Warsaw. Then perhaps she can forget about me slowly and find the thread of a decent life.

At long last the word came back through super-cautious networks of information that Roman would see him. It was with an immense feeling of relief that he followed out the instructions. A contact in Praga. A blindfolded ride back over the river. Two dozen false turns to throw off his sense of direction. Men whispering, leading him up a dirt path. A door, a room. Where was he? He did not know exactly.

“You may take off the blindfold,” a high tenor voice said in immaculate Polish.

Andrei adjusted his eyes to the shadows of the room. They were in a large shed. Crude curtains shutting out light. A kerosene lantern on a shelf. A cot. A few garden tools.

Roman’s face came across the flicker of light. He had seen the prototype of Roman a thousand times in a thousand places. Tall, erect, blond, high forehead, curly hair. He wore the unmaskable glower of perpetual arrogance of a Polish nobleman. It was the sneer of a Ulany colonel, the innuendo of superiority, the thin mocking lips. Andrei could almost tell Roman’s story. The son of a count. Landed gentry. Misused wealth. Medieval mentality. Roman most likely lived in the South of France before the war. He cared damn little about Poland except to bleed his estate dry with the blood of legalized serfdom. He saw damned little of Poland except during the social season.

Andrei’s estimation was deadly accurate. Like many of his ilk, Roman had become suddenly smitten with latent Polish “nationalism” after the invasion. He joined the government in exile in London because it was the fashionable thing to do. London was jammed with Poles who gathered to hear Chopin and recite poetry and live memories of Warsaw in the “good old days.”

He parachuted into Poland to work with the Home Army, a play of immature romanticism. Despite the guise of workman’s clothing, Roman’s frailties shone like a beacon. “You are persistent, Jan Kowal,” Roman said to Andrei.

“Only as persistent as you are evasive,” Andrei answered.

“Cigarette?” American, of course. He’d rough it later with the local product. No use carrying nationalism to extremes.

“I don’t smoke.”

Roman did. With a long cigarette holder.

“You’re Androfski, aren’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“I remember seeing you in Berlin in the Olympics.”

Andrei began to have that uneasy feeling he had had a thousand times in the presence of the Romans. He could read the thoughts hidden behind Roman’s eyes.

... Jew boy. We had Jewish families on our estate. Two of them. One was the village tailor. Had a little son with earlocks. I beat the hell out of him with my horsewhip. He wouldn’t fight—only pray. The other Jew ... grain merchant. Thief. Cheat. Always had my father indebted to him. The inbred hatred of centuries could not be belied by Roman’s small, tight smile.

“I am afraid,” Roman said, “that our position is such that you cannot expect too much co-operation from us at the present time. Perhaps later, as we are better organized ...

“You mistake my mission,” Andrei said. “I represent only myself. I wish to place myself at the service of the Home Army. A fighting command, preferred.”

“Oh, I see. That puts a different light on everything.” Roman’s slim elegant fingers caressed the long cigarette holder. “The Home Army does not work under conditions of a peacetime military force, naturally. All our people are volunteers. The maintenance of discipline cannot be as simple as a day in the guardhouse or the loss of pay. Discipline is life and death.”

“I don’t understand what you are trying to say.”

“Merely this. We wish to avoid in advance the creation of unnecessary problems.”

“Such as?”

“Well, we don’t solicit your services. It may be impossible to get our men to respond to your leadership. And ... you might feel rather uncomfortable with us.”

“No room for Jews!”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

“Your army represents the government of Poland. Thirty thousand Jewish soldiers died in Polish uniform during the invasion.” Andrei stopped. He knew his arguments were falling on deaf ears. Roman’s eyes now said, “If it weren’t for the Jews we would not be in this situation.” Oh, they’d have a few Jews all right, Andrei knew. A nice quota system like all the quota systems he’d lived with all his life.

“I’ll make you a counteroffer. I know my way in and out of all sixteen ghettos. Let me organize my own unit of the Home Army.”

Roman turned his back on Andrei. “My dear—er—Jan Kowal. That would only increase the friction. Can’t you see?”

“It is disgusting,” Gabriela snapped.

“No, I should have known.”

“What now?”

“There is no turning back. I am leaving in the morning for Lublin.” Gaby’s face became drawn. Sooner or later Andrei would reach a fearful conclusion. “The Bathyrans there have a good collection of foreign passports and visas. For old times’ sake they will give me one and enough money to travel. I’ll pick up the underground railway. We have sent a number of people out of the country that way. Goes into Germany to Stettin. From Stettin it will be a relatively easy matter to make a deal for a boat to Sweden. From Sweden I’ll get to England, then join the Free Polish Forces. If they refuse me a command, I’ll join the British army.”

Gabriela listened to every word with mounting fear. Andrei stopped his pacing. “Someone in this world must let me fight.”

She nodded. She knew. There would never be peace for him again until he was able to strike back.

“What about us?” she whispered.

“Go to Krakow to the Americans. Thompson is gone, but you still have friends there. They will get you out. We will meet in England, Gaby.”

She bit her finger and brushed the hair back over her shoulder nervously. “I don’t want to be parted from you.”

“We can’t travel together.”

“I’m afraid of it all, Andrei.”

“There is no choice.”

“Andrei, it is such a wild scheme. So many, many things could go wrong. If you leave tomorrow and I never see you again—”

He put his hand over her mouth gently, then wrapped his arms around her in his wonderful way, which he had not done for a very, very long time. “And when we meet in England, do you know the first thing we will do?”

“No.”

“Get married, of course, woman!”