Mila 18 - Leon Uris

“Then I’ll come into the ghetto with you, of course,” she said.

“Well, as a matter of fact, that wouldn’t be suitable.”

“You never did make a good liar,” she said. “What’s really on your mind?”

“This is the last time I’ll be seeing you, Gaby. I came to say good-by. It’s not easy—”

“Why? I have a right to know.”

“I don’t want a scene.”

“I assure you there will be no scene.”

He sucked in a deep breath. “Ana has been in Warsaw since a week after Pearl Harbor. We’ve had a lot of business together and naturally have been seeing a lot of each other.”

“Go on.”

“I wish you wouldn’t insist.”

“I do insist.”

“Very well. The night that Romek and the Farber sisters were taken to Gestapo House she was at my flat. Ana was pretty tired and upset as you can imagine. Well, one thing led to another ...”

Andrei watched Gabriela’s back stiffen with the hurt from his words and he watched her eyes grow watery. “I don’t have to draw you a diagram. You know that Ana and I were once ... Well, she’s older and better now. All things equal, it is a very good arrangement for both of us.”

He stopped when she abruptly slapped his face. Then he shrugged. “I don’t see why you have to take that attitude. Frankly, let’s admit it. We are getting a little tired of each other. At least I am. Well, that’s life. We should be civilized and shake hands and wish each other luck. After all ...”

“Get out!”

Andrei walked briskly down the street, knowing that her eyes were on his back. He turned the corner out of her sight and stopped and leaned against the building and touched the place where she had slapped him and choked back the tears. Insurmountable grief overcame him, and he sank to a sitting position on the pavement and dropped his head into his arms, which were drawn around his knees.

“Drunk,” several people commented, passing him by.

A pair of Polish Blue policemen hovered over him. “Get to your feet,” one ordered, prodding him with the club.

“Leave me alone,” Andrei mumbled, “just leave me alone.”

They bent down on either side of him, grabbed him under the armpits, and pulled him to his feet. “Let’s see your Kennkarte!”

Andrei grabbed them by the scruffs of their necks and banged their heads together. Both of them reeled about, bloody and half-senseless. Andrei staggered down the street, blinded by his own tears.

Across the street a pair of German soldiers crisscrossed in square movements before the iron gates of the home of a high Nazi. Andrei became aware of the pipe grenade tied to his arm. His right hand fished up the sleeve of his left arm and pulled it free.

He waited until the Germans approached each other and timed his throw to hit at their feet as they crossed. The pipe arched end over end, hit the sidewalk, gave one short clatter. Then a flash and a racket and then screams.

Ana waited in Andrei’s flat. His dazed eyes, his incoherent movement alarmed her.

“Andrei!”

He shook his head hard, spiraling back to reality.

“What happened? What’s wrong? What did she say?”

Andrei lurched for the cabinet holding his hoard of a half bottle of vodka. A stiff drink straightened him up. “What would you expect her to say when I broke in unannounced and found her and her Polish lover rolling around on the bed?”

“Oh, Andrei! I am sorry.”

“Never mind—never mind. I’ve been suspecting it for a long time. No matter. Tomorrow I’ll go out and start setting up other contacts.”

In the days after, Andrei suffered a torment he did not realize existed. Throughout the nights he sulked in agony, trying to find a secret source of strength to keep him from crawling back to Gabriela. He was unable to eat. He became weak. He slept only when drugged exhaustion came over him, and his sleep was in snatches filled with teasing, hurting dreams. Each memory of his Gabriela plunged him to a new depth of torment. He moved about the ghetto with a listlessness that matched the listlessness of life around him. It was as though the will to live had left him for the first time.

A few days before Christmas, Andrei dragged himself up the stairs to his flat.

Gabriela Rak stood behind the table. He had seen her in dreams with haunting reality. But now—a hallucination in the middle of the day! The end was coming. He knew he was losing his mind. The vision refused to disappear. “Gaby?” he said, half frightened.

“Yes,” she answered in a voice so crisp as to dispel the illusion.

“What the hell are you doing in the ghetto!” he roared. “How did you get in?”

“You are not the sole custodian of cleverness in the human race.”

“I demand to know—”

“Kindly don’t shout.”

“—how you got in.”

“I work for the Ursuline Sisters, remember? The convent has a church. My good friend Father Kornelli is the priest. Father Kornelli told me that Father Jakub at the Convert’s Church needed more candles for Christmas day, so I volunteered to bring them. Wasn’t that nice of me?”

Suddenly Andrei felt the presence of someone else in the flat. He turned his eyes slowly to the kitchen. Ana stood in the doorway. “Hello, Andrei,” she said.

He looked from Ana to Gabriela to Ana to Gabriela. He turned crimson. Caught red-handed!

“Really, Andrei,” Ana said, “you have become a frightful liar. I should be angry, for you assault my honor.”

“Which do you think is worse, Ana, Andrei’s story about you and him or the story about me rolling around in bed with my Polish lover?”

“Actually, both are corkers. By the way, Andrei, did you ever get around to telling Jules Schlosberg that his grenade works? Fortunately for us, the Gestapo has blamed it on Home Army.”

“All right—all right,” Andrei said, “enough fun. Ana, tell Gaby how Mira and Minna Farber died.”

The mood of foolery burst.

“Go on, tell her, Ana. No? Well, I will. After the Gestapo finished with them they were turned over to the Reinhard Corps barracks for sport. Stutze led the parade. A hundred more of his sportsmen followed. They continued raping them for hours after they were dead. Raping their corpses. Ana sent me to ask you to take their place in Warsaw.”

“That would never happen to me, dear. I carry a vial of poison.”

“I don’t want any of it to happen to you. None of it!”

“You’re shouting again.”

“Ana, for God’s sake—tell her.”

“I’ll tell you, Andrei,” Gabriela said. “I’ll tell you I have watched the only man I have ever loved come to me time after time after time with his heart eaten away because of the indifference of the Polish people. I am ashamed and I am humiliated for the way they have turned their backs on this terrible thing. Now you ask me, too, to be indifferent I am going to carry my share of this. I am going to work with Ana, whether you forbid it or not.”

Andrei turned his back on both of them and stared glumly, blankly, out of the window.

“I guess you don’t need me here,” Ana whispered to Gabriela. Gabriela saw her to the door. They touched cheeks and she left. Gaby drew the bolt on the door and walked to the center of the room. Andrei continued his sulking for a long, long time, berating himself for the rotten break he had given Gabriela by ever meeting her. Finally he turned around.

Gabriela had taken her dress off. It lay on the floor at her feet. She whisked her slip over her head in a delicate motion and let it crumple on top of her dress.

“Why, Andrei, you’re blushing.”

“For God’s sake, this is no time for ...”

She retreated to the bed and lay down and beckoned him with her forefinger. “Come,” she said, “let me show you how I take care of my other lover.”