Mila 18

MILA 18

LEON URIS

This book is dedicated to

ANTEK-ITZHAK ZUCKERMAN

ZIVIAH LUBETKIN

and the others who participated in an immortal moment in behalf of human dignity and freedom, and to one in particular

DR. ISRAEL I. BLUMENFELD

Part One

TWILIGHT

Chapter One

Journal Entry—August 1939

THIS IS THE FIRST entry in my journal. I cannot help but feel that the war will begin in a few weeks. If the lessons of the past three years are any barometer, something awesome is apt to happen if Germany makes a successful invasion, what with three and a half million Jews in Poland. Perhaps the tensions of the moment are making me overdramatic. My journal may prove completely worthless and a waste of time. Yet, as a historian, I must satisfy the impulse to record what is happening around me.

ALEXANDER BRANDEL

Drops of late summer rain splattered against the high window which ran from the floor to the ceiling.

The big room was violently Polish, in memory of one of the landed gentry who had kept it as a nest for his mistress of the moment during his visits to Warsaw from his estate. All evidence of female occupants had vanished. It was solid and leathery and masculine. Its former grandeur was somewhat qualified by a practical consideration that the present occupant was a working journalist with the particular slovenliness that goes with bachelorhood.

Christopher de Monti was untidy but rather inoffensive about it. It was almost a pleasure for his housekeeper to clean up after him, for he had immaculate taste in records and books and tobacco and liquor and a wardrobe marked with the finest British labels.

In one corner, next to the window, stood a banged-up typewriter and a ream of paper and an overfull ash tray.

The single bedroom was formed by a deep alcove off the living room which could be isolated by drawing a pair of velvet drapes. A night stand beside the huge bed sported an ancient German table-model radio shaped like a church window. From the radio escaped the sad and foreboding notes of Chopin’s Nocturne in A Flat.

That was about all one heard on Radio Polskie these days; Chopin performed by Paderewski ... nocturnes.

It seemed as though night was again to fall on Poland.

Chris grumbled in a state of half sleep and half wakefulness and stretched his lean, wiry limbs to their full reaches and felt across the bed for Deborah. She was gone. His eyes opened and searched the dark corners of the alcove. Then he quieted as he heard her moving about in the other room.

His hand groped automatically on the night stand and found the pack of cigarettes, and in a moment he watched the smoke laze upward as the nocturne raced to a pulsating crescendo.

Chris rolled over on his side and looked at Deborah through an opening in the drapes. Her half-naked body was bathed in late afternoon shadows. Chris loved to watch her dress. She balanced a foot on the end of a chair and stretched her leg and rolled up her stockings and slipped into her blouse and skirt with effortless grace. Then she stood before the mirror, her fingers darting pins into long raven hair and twisting it nervously into a firm knot. He remembered that first time when he had taken the pins from her hair one by one and watched it fall like black silk. She took her trench coat from the coat tree and buttoned it, never acknowledging that she knew Chris’s eyes were on her back, and with determined abruptness walked for the door.

“Deborah.”

She stopped and pressed her forehead against the door.

“Deborah.”

She came into the alcove and sat on the edge of the bed. Chris snuffed out the cigarette, rolled next to her, and lay his head in her lap. Her black eyes filled with melancholy. Her fingers traced his cheek and mouth and neck and shoulders, and Chris looked up at her. How beautiful you are, he thought. She was biblical. Black and olive. A Deborah of the Bible. When she stood, Chris grabbed her wrist and she could feel his hand tremble.

“We can’t keep this up. Let me speak to him.”

“It would kill him, Chris.”

“How about me? It’s killing me.”

“Please.”

“I’m talking to him tonight.”

“Oh Lord, why does it always have to end like this?”

“It will until you’re my wife.”

“You’re not to see him, Chris. I mean that.”

He released his grip. “You’d better go,” he whispered. He turned away, his back toward her.

“Chris ... Chris ...”

Pride kept him silent.

“I’ll call you,” she said. “Will you see me?”

“You know I will.”

He threw on a robe and listened to the click-click-click of her footsteps on the marble hall outside. He pulled back the window drapes. The rain had slowed to a miserable drizzle. In a moment Deborah appeared on Jerusalem Boulevard below. She looked up to his window and waved her hand feebly, then ran across the street to where a line of droshkas waited. The horse clip-clopped away from the curb and turned out of sight.

Chris let the drapes fall closed, snuffing out most of the light. He wandered into the kitchen and poured himself cup of the steaming coffee Deborah had made, then slumped into a chair and hid his face in his hands, shaken by the impact of another parting.

On the radio, a newscaster speaking in nervous Polish recited the latest diplomatic setback in the growing mountain of them.

Chapter Two

Journal Entry

ON THE NEWS WE hear that Russia and Germany are about to announce a non-aggression treaty. It seems impossible that the two sworn enemies on the planet, pledged to destroy each other, have come to this. Hitler’s tactics seem logical. He obviously wants to neutralize Russia for the time being to avoid the possibility of a two-front war (that is, if England and France honor their obligations to Poland). I’m willing to wager that the wages being paid to Stalin is half of Poland and I think we are being divided up at some long polished table in Moscow this minute.

ALEXANDER BRANDEL

In embassies, state departments, chancelleries, foreign offices, consulates, ministries, war offices, code rooms, newsrooms, frantic men scurried to all-night conferences, played war games, barked into telephones of flooded switchboards, cursed, prayed, pleaded.

A trail of broken treaties lay strewn about like corpses after a Mongol invasion.

Men of good will were stunned at the warped logic behind which eighty million civilized people rallied and shrieked and strutted like hysterical robots. Hammered into a hypnotic trance by the well-timed tantrums that were the mad genius of Adolf Hitler, the men of good will sank deeper into muck and mire, unable to divest themselves of the all-consuming monster in their midst.

The geopoliticians had drawn and quartered the world into areas of labor and raw material and presented the master plan which stood to make Genghis Khan and every archvillain of every age pale by comparison.

The German masses gave the edict in a terrifying redundance, “Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!”

“Lebensraum [Land to live]!”

“Sieg Heil!

And they poised ready to act out the role of Teuton war gods to the strains of Wagnerian Fire Music.

“We must save German citizens living under foreign tyranny! A German is always a German!”

“Sieg Heil!”

Austria and Czechoslovakia qualified. Flushed with bloodless victories, certain that America, France, and England would not fight, the Nazi cancer spread.

“Danzig is German! Return the Polish Corridor! Return the 1914 borders! Halt the inhuman treatment of ethnic Germans!”

“Sieg Heil!”

Once an indifferent world stood by and shrugged as little yellow men fought little yellow men in a place called Manchuria, and once France sputtered feebly as Germany broke the Versailles Treaty and marched into the Rhineland, and once men debated, then sighed as black men in mud huts armed with spears fought for their land ... a name that children used in games ... Abyssinia.

A mesmerized world quivered at the proving ground of democratic sterility; the rape of Spain by Italian and Moroccan and German hordes.

Now Austria, now Czechoslovakia, and the righteous cowed and the evil grew bold.

Once the harbingers of peace told their people they had made a bill of peace in a place called Munich. As Poland’s hour grew near came that realization that there was no place left to run or to hide, nor words to say, nor treaties to make.

In Moscow, a shrewd chessplayer knew that the long dream of the Allies was to have Russia and Germany maul each other to death. His distrust of England and France was built upon decades of boycott, hard-learned lessons when republican Spain was abandoned, and finally when Russia was not invited to the sellout in Munich.

Hitler, positive of the final timidity of the Allies, positive their string of betrayals would extend to Poland, keyed his war trumpets to shattering highs and was responded to with black drum rolls and pounding boots.

Josef Stalin was no less certain of Allied betrayal. In a desperate bid for time he entered into negotiations with his archenemy. To ensure easy, unimpaired victory for himself, Hitler did business with Stalin, and the Allies cried, “Foul!”

And in the middle a proud and defiant Poland, which hated Russia and Germany with equal vigor, ended all hope of Allied unity by refusing to petition Russia for help.

Chris sped his Fiat down the rain-slickened boulevard and turned into the shop-lined New World Street. It was gray out. The late shoppers clung close to the building sand moved with haste past the elegant store windows. At the corner of Traugutta Street, where the line of shops ended, the New World Street changed its name to the Krakow Suburb Boulevard for reasons no one seemed to understand. Chris headed toward the semi-faded, semi-elegant Bristol Hotel. The hotel made a good newsman’s headquarters. It gave him a twenty-four-hour-a-day switchboard service and it stood at the apex of a triangle that enveloped the Europa Hotel, the Foreign Ministry, the President’s Palace, and Warsaw’s city hall. Between them, there was always a constant flood of news.

Chris turned the car over to the doorman and brushed past the turmoil of the rumor-filled lobby to the opened-cage Otis elevator of World War I vintage.

On the balcony floor he entered the door of a suite marked Swiss News Agency.

Ervin Rosenblum, photographer and journalist and Chris’s indispensable man, stood at the worktable, which was spilling over with photographs, cables, stories, and copy.

Chris walked beside him, wordless, and took a fistful of the late dispatches. One by one he let them flutter to the floor. Ervin Rosenblum was a very homely man who stood five feet five inches and was almost sightless without his thick-lens glasses. As Chris read, Ervin searched Chris’s pockets for a cigarette.

“Boy,” Chris mumbled. “They’re surer than hell going to start shooting soon.”

Ervin gave up his search for a smoke. “Mark my words, Poland is going to fight,” he said.

“Maybe she’ll be better off if she doesn’t fight.”

Ervin looked at his watch nervously. “Where the hell is Susan? I’ve got to get this stuff to the lab.” He picked up his Speed Graphic and jiggled the flash bulbs in his pocket.

“Chris, do you think England and France will help us?”

Chris kept reading the dispatches. “When are you and Susan getting married?”

“I can’t keep her still long enough to ask her. If she’s not at the orphanage she’s at a Zionist meeting. Did you ever hear of six meetings a week? Only Jews can talk so much. So I’m appointed to the executive council just so I can get dates to see her. Momma asks, are you coming to dinner tonight? She’s made potato latkes for you, special.”

“Potato latkes? I’ll get there between stops.”

Susan Geller appeared in the doorway. She was as short and homely as Ervin was. Squat, devoid of almost all features which make women pretty. Her hair was pulled back straight and flat and wrapped into a knot under her nurse’s cap. Her hands were large and knobby from the life of lifting sick people and changing bedpans, but the moment she spoke the ugliness faded. Susan Geller was one of the kindest creatures on the earth.

“You’re a half hour late,” Ervin greeted her.

“Hi, honey,” Chris said.

“I like you better,” she answered to Chris.

Ervin grabbed a batch of negatives, film, bulbs, and his camera. “It’s all yours,” he said to Chris.

“Can you stop by the President’s Palace? See Anton. Maybe he can fix us up for five minutes with Smigly-Rydz. He may be changing his tune now that the Russian German non-aggression pact is official.”

The phone rang. Ervin snatched it off the hook with his free hand. “Hello ... Just a minute.” He held his hand over the mouthpiece. “Wait outside,” he said to Susan. “I’ll bright there.”

Susan and Chris blew good-by kisses to each other.

“Who is it, Rosy?”

“Deborah’s husband,” he answered, and handed him the phone and left.

“Why, hello, Paul. How are you?”

“I was asking the same question. I was just saying to Deborah how much we and the children have missed you.”

“Things have been pretty hectic.”

“I can imagine.”

“I do owe you an apology for not calling. How ... uh ... is Deborah?”

“Fine, just fine. Why don’t you break away for dinner tomorrow?”

Chris was finding it unbearable to keep the masquerade. Every time he saw Paul and Deborah together, every time he thought of them sharing a bed, the revulsion in him grew.

“I’m afraid it’s impossible. I may have to send Rosy to Krakow and—”

Paul Bronski’s voice lowered. “It is rather important that you come. I should like to see you on a pressing matter. Say, seven.”

Chris was scared. Paul’s tone had the authority of command. Perhaps Paul Bronski himself would call the showdown that Deborah had avoided. Maybe it was all fantasy. They were good friends. Why not invite him to dinner?

“I’ll be there,” Chris said.

Chapter Three

Journal Entry

I HAVE STUDIED THE trend of the behavior of the ethnic Germans in Austria and Czechoslovakia. They have done a tremendous job in undermining in advance of the German armies. They have certainly been raising all sorts of hell in Danzig. Just before the Austrian “Anschluss” they became strangely quiet. This past week their activity here has all but stopped. Could this be on orders? Is this the lull before the storm? Is history about to repeat?

Everyone I know is being called up into the reserve. Smigly-Rydz means to fight. Polish temper and history indicate they will.

ALEXANDER BRANDEL

“We Poles unfortunately got ourselves located between Russia and Germany. The traffic between the two has been busy,” Dr. Paul Bronski, dean of the College of Medicine, said to an auditorium overcrowded with students and faculty. “We have been trampled. We have even ceased to exist, yet Polish nationalism fires a breed of patriot that has always made Poland return.”

A spontaneous burst of applause halted his speech.

“Poland is in trouble again. Our two friends are restless. The situation is so urgent that they have even called upon the senior citizens like this specimen before you. ...”

Polite laughter for Paul’s overcritical estimation of himself. Although balding and sporting a scholar’s stooped shoulders, Paul Bronski had sharp and handsome features.

“Despite the blunder of the High Command in calling me into the army, I predict that Poland will somehow survive.”

In the back of the auditorium, Dr. Franz Koenig stood motionless, looking into the sea of faces. Bronski’s leaving filled him with an exhilaration he had never known. His long, patient wait was almost over.

“I leave this university both heavy-hearted and joyous. The prospect of war is enormously real and it saddens me. But I am content for the things that we have done here together and I am happy because I leave so many friends.”

Koenig didn’t even hear the rest of it. They would all be dripping tears, he knew. Bronski had that faculty to put a tremor in his throat that never failed to move the recipients of his milky words.

They were all standing now, and unabashed tears flowed down young cheeks and even grizzly old cheeks of professors in a sloppy indulgence of sentiment as they sang school songs and anthems, which sounded like school songs and anthems everywhere.

Look at Bronski! Engulfed by his adoring staff. Shaking hands, slapping backs until the end. The “beloved” Bronski. “The University of Warsaw without Paul Bronski is not the University of Warsaw.” “Your office will remain untouched until you return to us.”

Your office, Koenig thought. Your office, indeed.

Dr. Paul Bronski, the “beloved” Paul Bronski, had finished the last of his instructions, dictated the last of his letters, and dismissed his weeping secretary with an affectionate buss.

He was alone now.

He looked about the room. Paneled walls covered with the symbols of achievement that one would gather as the head of a great medical college. Diplomas and awards and photos of students and classes. A billboard of glory.

He shoved the final batch of papers into his brief case. All that was left was a photo of Deborah and the children on his desk. He slid that into the top drawer and locked it. And he was done.

A soft, almost apologetic knock on the door.

“Come in.”

Dr. Franz Koenig entered. The little gray-haired man with the little gray mustache advanced timidly to the edge of the desk. “We have been together for a long time, Paul. Words fail me.”

Paul Bronski was amused. A magnificently understated phrase ... a lovely play on words. Dr. Koenig was a humorless man who could never believe his sincerity was doubted.

“Franz, I’m going to recommend you fill my office—”

“No one can fill—”

“Nonsense ...”

And more garble ... and another farewell.

Franz Koenig waited in his own office across the hall until Paul left, and then he re-entered. His eyes became fixed on the leather chair behind Bronski’s desk. He walked behind it and touched it Yes, tomorrow he would move in and things would look good from here.

My chair ... dean of medicine! My chair. Bronski gone. Quick-talking, teary-voiced Bronski. Ten years he had waited. The board was blinded by Bronski. They were entranced by the fact they could put a graduate of the university as the dean of medicine for the first time in six decades. That’s why they chose Bronski. A whispering campaign against me because I am a German. They were so eager to make Bronski the dean, they even closed their eyes to the fact that he is a Jew.

Franz went to his own office again and got his homburg and tucked his cane over his arm and walked in his half trot down the long corridor. The students nodded and doffed their caps as he sped by.

He approached the big ornate wrought-iron gates. A knot of students blocked his way. For a moment everyone stood still, then the knot dissolved and he passed through, feeling their eyes on him.

How differently they reacted these days, he thought. No longer the vague indifference. He was a man to be respected, even feared. Fear me? The thought delighted him.

Even his fat nagging Polish wife behaved differently nowadays. He approached the big ornate wrought-iron gates, continuing the fast pace in rhythm to his tapping cane in the direction of Pilsudski Square.

He was happy today. He even made an attempt to whistle. The end of a long, long journey was at hand.

Like most of the million ethnic Germans, Franz Koenig had been born in western Poland in a territory formerly German-occupied, then freed to Poland after the World War. In his youth his family moved to Danzig, which was located in a geographical freak known as the “Polish Corridor.” It was a finger of land which split East Prussia away from the German mainland in order to give Poland access to the sea. It was an abnormal division. Danzig and the Polish Corridor filled with ethnic Germans and Poles became a thorn in German pride and the object of bickering and threats from the beginning.

Frank Koenig came from a good merchant family. He had received a classical education in medicine in Heidelberg and in Switzerland. He was a man of total moderation. Although raised in the furor of Danzig, he considered himself neither German nor Polish nor much of anything but a good doctor and teacher; a profession, he felt, that crossed the bounds of nationalism.

Franz Koenig was an adequate man. His appointment to the University of Warsaw was adequate. The Polish girl he had married was adequate. He lived his life in a mild and inoffensive manner, delighting most in the privacy of his study with good music and good books. The early marriage ambitions of his Polish wife failed to stir him. She gave up in disgust and grew obese.

When the Nazis came to power, Franz Koenig was embarrassed by their behavior. In an outburst, rare for him, he referred to the SA Brown Shirts as “thick-necked, pinheaded bullies.” He thought himself fortunate to be in Warsaw and clear of the havoc in Germany.

All that changed.

There was a month, a week, a day, and a moment.

The office of dean of the College of Medicine was open. By seniority, competence, and devotion, the position was his. In anticipation of the appointment which should have been routine, he constructed a dull but adequate speech to accept the chair. He never delivered the speech. Paul Bronski, fifteen years his junior, was appointed.

He remembered Kurt Liedendorf, the leader of Warsaw’s ethnics, snorting in his ear.

“It’s a blow to us—all us Germans, Doktor Koenig. It is a terrible insult.”

“Nonsense ... nonsense ...”

“Now maybe you understand how the Versailles Treaty has made the German people anonymous. Look, you ... Heidelberg ... Geneva. A man of culture. You have been made anonymous too. You are a victim of Jewish cunning. All us Germans are victims of Jewish cunning, Herr Doktor. ... Hitler says ...”

Jewish cunning ... Bronski ... Jewish cunning ...

All that Franz Koenig ever wanted for a world he served well was to be the dean of medicine at the University of Warsaw.

“Come and spend the afternoon with us, Herr Doktor.

Be with your own people,” Kurt Liedendorf said. “We have a special guest from Berlin who will give us a talk.”

And the guest from Berlin told them, “Perhaps the methods of the Nazis are harsh, but to rectify the injustices heaped upon the German people takes men of strong will and vigor. Everything we do is justified because the goal to restore the German people to their rightful way of life is justified.”

“Ah, Herr Doktor,” Liedendorf said, “Good to see you here. Sit here, sit up front.”

“Hitler has seen to it that the German people are not anonymous any more. If you declare yourself as a German, you will not be anonymous!”

He came home from the fourth meeting, and the fifth and the sixth, and he looked at his fat Polish wife and all that was around him. Feudal gentry, universal ignorance. “I am a German,” Franz Koenig said to himself. “I am a German.”

“Doktor Koenig, you should see it in Danzig. Thousands and thousands of Germans fighting for the Führer. Letting the world know that we will not be abused any more.”

How proud he was of the deliverance of the Germans from Austria and Czechoslovakia!

“I’ve been thinking of it deeply, Liedendorf. I want to join in this work.”

He walked along the edge of the Saxony Gardens, past the blocks of government buildings and palaces and art museums. All this granite and marble were not of his sinew. In the beer halls, in the homes of his own people, German people, was where he belonged. Here Dr. Franz Koenig was a respected man. Here they spoke of great things without shame or fear.

He stopped before the Square of the Iron Gates just beyond the Saxony Gardens.

A sickening odor of half-rotted vegetables, unwashed peasants, squalling chickens, haggling, screaming barterers and beggars, and a thousand pushcarts pleaded for the zloty in the most primitive form of trade.

“Used neckties, good as new!”

“Pencils!”

“Buy from me!”

Old women squatted on the cobblestones with a few eggs, thieves and pickpockets roamed about, and lines of pushcarts dangled secondhand shoes and greasy jackets. The noise of the iron rims of the carts roared and echoed over the square.

“Buy from me!”

Bearded Jews, bearded Paul Bronskis, argued endlessly to save a half zloty in hand-waving Yiddish, a language cruelly butchering the beautiful German tongue.

A drunken soldier was hurled from a café and fell at Koenig’s feet.

Drunk as a Pole—that is what they say, Koenig thought. Drunk as a Pole. Such fitting words.

All of Poland had passed before him in two short squares. How wrong is Hitler’s disgust of the Slavs? A nation of thirty million people with only two million newspaper readers. A nation of feudal lords and serfs in this, the twentieth century. A nation which worshiped a black madonna as African Zulus prayed to sun gods.

This was Poland to Franz Koenig. Five per cent Paris, walled behind marble mansions and ruling decadence. Ninety-five per cent Ukrainia ... abominable ignorance.

What could the good industrious German folk have done with the fertile flat lands and the bursting mineral deposits of Silesia?

“Buy from me!”

Who was this mass of dirty people with their childlike mentality to hold back the German people, who had contributed more to the world’s enrichment and knowledge than any other race?

Franz Koenig knew that no matter what small injustices the Nazis perpetrated the final result of a greater Germany justified the means.

Koenig circumvented the confusion of the market place and entered Hans Schultz’s bar.

Schultz smiled. “Guten Tag, Herr Doktor, Guten Tag.”

“Hello, Schultz. Anything new?”

“Ja. Herr Liedendorf is unable to come out these days. He said that our work is done and you should stay home and wait.”

Dr. Koenig downed his beer and nodded to Schultz, who smiled as he wiped the bar.

In a few moments he entered his flat and put his hat neatly on the rack and placed his cane directly below it. He looked at his fat Polish wife, whose mouth was sucking in and out like a puckered fish, and he could not hear what she was saying. She walked and her flesh wobbled.

He envisioned her in the bed, which sagged on one side because of her immensity, and he saw her flabby buttocks and her hanging breasts.

Koenig walked to his study and slammed the door behind him.

He turned on the radio. It was always set now on Radio Deutschland.

A rally from Hamburg!

“We Germans cannot tolerate the outrageous treatment of our citizens in Poland, where German women and children are unsafe from Polish vandals ... where German men are beaten and murdered!”

“Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!”

And soon ten thousand voices shattered the air waves, singing “Deutschland über Alles,” and Dr. Franz Koenig closed his eyes and tears fell down his cheeks, just as they had fallen down the cheeks of his students.

And he prayed that his liberators would be coming soon.

Chapter Four

Journal Entry

WONDERFUL NEWS! ANDREI CAME home on leave unexpectedly! We of the Bathyran Zionist Executive Council have a lot of things to talk over and decide. With Andrei here it will give us a chance to get together.

ALEXANDER BRANDEL

The army truck came to a halt before the northernmost bridge that spanned the Vistula River from Warsaw to Praga. Captain Andrei Androfski hopped out of the cab, thanked the driver, and walked along the river toward the new northern suburb of Zoliborz. He tilted back the four-cornered cap worn by officers of the crack Ulany regiments and he whistled as he walked and received and returned the smiles and flirtations of young lady strollers. Captain Andrei Androfski indeed cut the classic figure of a Ulan cavalry officer. His leather shined, and the short stiletto at his side glinted when the sun caught it.

He turned away from the river and into a tree-lined street of lovely new homes in an area stamped with upper middle-class wealth. Andrei spotted a large stone on the sidewalk and began to dribble it with his feet with the dexterity of a trained soccer player, his leg muscles fairly rippling through his trousers. He gave the stone a final swift kick of the boot, speeding it down the street toward an imaginary goal, and turned at the gate of Dr. Paul Bronski’s house.

“Uncle Andrei!” shouted ten-year-old Stephan as he sprinted over the lawn and leaped on his uncle’s back.

“Schmendrick!”

The two “clashed,” and the big cavalry officer was “thrown” to the ground, apparently no match for his eighty-pound nephew. He surrendered gallantly, got to his feet, and lifted the victor on his shoulders.

“How is Batory?”

“Batory! The first, the most beautiful, and the most fierce animal in all of Poland.”

“What has he done lately, Uncle Andrei?”

“Lately? This week—well, let me see. I took him to England for the Grand National, and he ran so fast he split their and caused it to thunder. Well sir, those Englishmen thought it was raining and ran for cover and didn’t even see the race. Batory lapped the field four times and was coming up for the fifth time when the second fastest horse crossed the finish line. And those stupid Englishmen who were hiding in the stands thought Batory finished last.”

“Who takes care of Batory when you are gone?”

“First Sergeant Styka, personally!”

“I wish I could ride him again,” Stephan said, recalling the most thrilling incident of his young life.

“You will, just as soon as we clear up some things.”

“Can I jump him this time?”

“Yes, I think so. That is, if heights don’t make you too dizzy. When Batory jumps, the world below becomes very small. As a matter of fact, I don’t enter him in jumping races any more. Batory jumps so high, the other horses are around the track before he comes down.”

Andrei walked to the house.

“Uncle Andrei!” cried Rachael Bronski. This meeting was devoid of the previous violence, for the voice belonged to an elegant black-eyed fourteen-year-old young lady whose greeting was limited to an affectionate hug.

“Andrei!” cried Deborah, running in from the kitchen, wiping her hands. She flung her arms around her brother’s neck. “You devil! Why didn’t you let us know you were coming?”

“I only knew myself last night. Besides, I want to stay clear of Alexander Brandel. He’ll call one of those damned meetings.”

“How long?

“Four whole days.”

“How wonderful!”

Andrei lifted Stephan from his shoulders as though he were weightless.

“What did you bring me?” Stephan demanded.

“Stephan, shame!” his sister reprimanded.

Andrei winked and stretched his arms out Stephan began fishing through his uncle’s pockets, which had been an unfailing source of booty from his earliest memory. He withdrew a gilded Polish eagle, the insignia whose two spread wings held up the front corner of the Ulany cap.

“Mine?” with apprehension.

“Yours.”

“Wow!” and Stephan was gone to alert the neighborhood that his great Uncle Andrei was home.

“And for my beautiful niece.”

“You spoil them.”

“Do me something.”

The girl’s fingers quickly worked the ribbon open.

“Oh! Oh!” She hugged him and raced to the mirror to fix the pair of ivory combs into thick black hair which was just like her mother’s.

“She’s beautiful,” Andrei said.

“Boys are already starting to look at her.”

“What do you mean! What boys!”

Deborah laughed. “She won’t be a wallflower like her mother.”

Rachael walked to her uncle, whom she adored, and kissed his cheek. “Thank you, Uncle Andrei.”

“My reward, please,” Andrei said, pointing to the piano.

Rachael played her mood. A bubbling étude. Andrei watched a moment, then Deborah took his hand and led him toward the kitchen. He stopped at the door again.

“She plays like an angel—like you used to play.”

Deborah shooed Zoshia, the housekeeper, out and set on some water for tea. Andrei sprawled and loosened his tunic. It smelled good in the kitchen. Deborah had been baking cookies. It was like the old flat on Sliska Street on the day before Sabbath. Deborah took off Andrei’s cap and ran her fingers through the array of curly blond hair.

“My baby brother.”

She set before him a large platter of cookies, which were half finished by the time she poured the tea. He took a long sip. “This is good, this is good. Sergeant Styka brews a lousy tea.”

“How are things on the border, Andrei?”

Andrei shrugged. “How should I know! They don’t consult me. Ask Smigly-Rydz.”

“Be serious.”

“Seriously. I’m home for four days—”

“We’re all worried sick.”

“All right, the German concentrations are very, very heavy. Let me give you an opinion, Deborah. As long as Hitler gets what he wants by bluffing, fine. Well, he isn’t bluffing Poland and he may damned well back down.”

“Paul has been called up.”

Andrei uncrossed his legs. The mention of Paul Bronski struck an obvious note of discord. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said quickly. “I didn’t think—”

“None of us did,” Deborah said. She walked to the sink and began rolling the thin dough for more cookies. “Have you seen Gabriela yet?”

“I came directly here. She is probably still working.”

“Why don’t you two come to dinner tonight?”

“If Brandel doesn’t find me first.”

Try to make it. Christopher de Monti will be over.”

“How is my boy Chris!”

“He has been terribly busy since the crisis. We haven’t seen him for several weeks,” she said, rolling the dough at a furious pace.

Andrei walked up behind his sister, turned her around by the shoulders, and tried to lift her chin so she would look at him. Deborah shook her head and spun away.

“Please don’t dream things up between Chris and me.”

“Just old friends?”

“Just old friends.”

“Does Paul know?”

“There’s nothing to know!”

“Did you raise me for an idiot?”

“Andrei, please ... please, we have enough to worry about these days. And for God’s sake, don’t pick an argument with Paul.”

“Who argues with Paul? He always—”

“I swear, if you two get into another fight—”

Andrei gulped down his tea, stuffed a half dozen cookies into his pocket, and buttoned his tunic.

“Please promise me you’ll get along with Paul tonight. He’s going away. Do it for me.”

Andrei grunted, came up behind Deborah, and gave her a brisk slap on the backside. “See you later,” he said.

Andrei Androfski stretched lazily on a park bench on the edge of the Lazienki Gardens facing the American Embassy. The statue of Frédéric Chopin hovered above him, patronized by the local pigeons, and the Belvedere Palace of the former Marshal Pilsudski was immersed in the greenery behind him. It was a nice place to laze. He engaged in his favorite pastime of undressing the female pedestrians with his eyes. He dug into his pocket and found the last of Deborah’s cookies and munched.

After a while the main door of the Embassy opened. Gabriela Rak came out and walked up the embassy-lined Aleja Ujazdowska. He caught up to her by the time she reached the first intersection. Sensing a masher behind her, Gabriela stepped quickly from the curb.

“Madam,” Andrei said, “would you kindly give me the name of that fortunate young lady who owns the heart of the most dashing officer in the Ulanys?”

She stopped in the middle of the street.

“Andrei? Andrei?” And she spun into his arms. The traffic policeman raised his hand, sending a flood of vehicles swirling around them. They dodged and honked their horns with the irritated understanding one gives to a soldier and his girl kissing in the middle of a street. At last an unpatriotic taxi driver shouted that they were a pair of jackasses and sent them scurrying to the safety of a park bench across the way.

“Oh, Andrei,” she said, and lay her head on his chest. “Oh, Andrei,” and she sniffled.

“If I knew that I was going to make you so sad, I wouldn’t have returned.”

She dried her eyes and purred with contentment. “How long?”

“Four days.”

“Oh, I’m so happy.”

“I almost had to find another woman for myself. I thought you would never get out of the Embassy.”

Gabriela toyed with his large hand, which nearly made two of hers. “I’ve just been in a meeting. We aren’t reopening the American school. All the children have been evacuated to Krakow. Even some of the key personnel are leaving.”

Andrei grumbled something about the traditional cowardice of Americans.

“Let’s not talk about it now,” she said. “We only have ninety-six hours, and look at the time we have already wasted. We can’t go to my place. I had it repainted. It smells terrible. I didn’t know you were coming home.”

“And if we go to my place, Alexander Brandel and the whole damned executive council will be camping at the doorstep.”

“Let’s risk it,” Gabriela said with a low-voiced tremor of want that sent her captain to the curb in search of a droshka.

They drove north past the imposing mansions of the “new rich” on the Avenue of the Marshals. Gabriela snuggled against him, her fingers feeling his face and shoulders.

Andrei’s flat on Leszno Street sat in a middle-class neighborhood that buffered the rich on the south from the wild slums on the north. They climbed the stairs toward his tiny flat, arms about each other. By the time they reached the third-floor landing, Gabriela stopped to catch her breath.

“My next lover has to live on the ground floor,” she said.

Andrei swept her up in his arms and tossed her over a shoulder like a sack of sugar.

“Put me down, you crazy fool!”

He emitted a bloodcurdling cavalry charge and leaped up the final flight of stairs two steps at a time, kicked open his never-locked door, then stood in amazement with Gabriela trying to squirm off his shoulder.

Andrei’s eyes went from corner to corner around the flat. He peeked into the kitchen, then looked around again, wondering if he had invaded the wrong apartment. The place was spotlessly clean. For years he had carefully strewn his books and papers about. His desk was always three inches deep in reports. All the wonderful clutter, all the carefully preserved dust—all of the things that make a man a bachelor—were gone.

Andrei kicked open the closet door. Everything pressed and hanging neatly.

The kitchen ... All those lovely unwashed dishes washed.

There were curtains, lace curtains, at the windows.

“I’ve been evicted!” Andrei cried. “No, something more horrible than that has happened. A female has been here!”

“Andrei, if you don’t put me down I’ll scream rape.”

He lowered her to the floor.

“I think you owe me an explanation,” he said.

“I’d sit in my place night after night waiting for Batory to charge down the street bearing my Ulan warrior. All alone with my ten black cats and my memories. And I came here and sat because you were all around me and I wasn’t quite so lonely. But! Who can sit in such a mess!”

“I know your type, Gabriela Rak. You’re going to try to make me over.”

“Oh, you know it!”

She leaped at him, and he caught her off the floor and held her and sank his lips into hers. And in a moment Andrei had no more talk to make. They were bringing each other from smoldering dormancy with an urgency that heightened every second.

The phone rang.

It stuck them like a knife. They froze.

It rang again.

“Son of a bitch, Brandel.”

It rang again.

“Let it ring, darling,” she said.

And it did ... again and again and again.

Gabriela spun away from him, teary-eyed. “It has eyes, that phone. It never rang the whole time you were gone.”

“Well, maybe I’d better answer.”

“Oh, you might as well. Every Bathyran in Warsaw knows that Andrei Androfski is home on leave.”

He snatched the phone from the hook. “Is that you, you son of a hitch, Brandel!”

A soft voice answered on the other end. “Of course it’s me, Andrei. You’ve been in town for three hours and twenty minutes. Are you snubbing your old friends?”

“Alex, do me something. Go to hell,” he said, and slammed the receiver down. The instant he did, he lifted it again and dialed Brandel’s number.

“Andrei?”

“I’ll call you later. Tell the gang I’m anxious to see them.”

“I hope I didn’t break anything up. Have a nice time. Good Shabes.”

Andrei walked to the edge of the bed, where Gabriela sulked. He leaned over and put his lips into her honey hair, and she closed her eyes, reveling in the sensations his touch caused. Andrei went to the window and pulled down the shade, plunging the room into dusk, and he locked the door.

“Don’t be angry, Gaby. I didn’t know about your place. I would have gotten a hotel room. Don’t be angry.”

“I’m not angry,” she whispered.

They lay beside each other, luxuriating in teasing and touching and whispering.

Suddenly Gabriela broke into a sweat and she was no longer able to control herself. “Oh God, I’ve missed you so!”

And they fought awkwardly and furiously to get out of their clothing.

The phone rang.

This time it went unanswered.

Chapter Five

Journal Entry

I THINK I PICKED the wrong time to call Andrei. Thank goodness his temper goes down as fast as it rises.

I talked to banker friends this evening. Everyone is frantic to convert their securities to American dollars or Swiss and South American bonds. Whole estates are being liquidated.

With the Russian-German alliance a fact, the German propaganda has gone utterly insane with charges of Polish border violations and maltreatment of ethnic Germans.

Meanwhile, why do we keep a deaf ear to England’s and France’s pleadings that we negotiate for help from Russia? Does our General Staff really think we can beat the Germans?

ALEXANDER BRANDEL

Dr. Paul Bronski filled the large brown envelope with a number of legal and financial papers. There was a will, insurance policies, a variety of securities, some cash in large denominations, and a key to his safe-deposit box. Finally a sealed letter. He scrawled the words, “In the event of my death,” and put the letter in with the other papers, wet the flap, and rolled it stuck.

In the dining room, young Rachael Bronski pranced about the table helping the large and rapidly aging Zoshia put the finishing touches on a lush setting. The table was overburdened with heavy silverware and gold-rimmed porcelain.

Rachael touched the flowers in the centerpiece and made them just so.

In his study, Paul Bronski listened to the BBC.

“In an exclusive interview with Polish Marshal Smigly-Rydz, Christopher de Monti of the Swiss News Agency, in a story datelined Warsaw, said that the Polish nation remains as always—no thought of a mutual-aid treaty with the Soviet Union. Later BBC confirmed this seemingly unshakable policy in a news conference with Poland’s Foreign Minister Beck. Poland’s adamance is viewed as bringing war one step closer.”

Deborah, putting the finishing touches on herself, entered the study. Paul placed the envelope face down, turned off the news, and smiled at his wife. In their sixteen years of marriage she had never failed to make herself attractive. No man could ask for a more perfect mate for his career.

“You look lovely,” he said.

“Thank you, dear,” she said. “Paul ... please try to stay out of an argument with Andrei tonight.”

“Andrei makes that difficult at times.”

“Please.”

“You’ve got my assurance. Get your brother’s.”

“I think for the children’s sake—and—well, it should be special tonight.”

The doorbell rang. Rachael answered. “Hello, Chris, come in.”

“You look more like your mother every day.”

Rachael blushed. “Momma and Daddy are in the study. Go on in.”

Paul and Deborah stood and looked at the door as Chris came through. Then Deborah studiously avoided his eyes. “It’s been a long time, Chris,” she said.

He nodded. Paul shook his hand, and for the moment the fear of the first moment of the meeting subsided.

“Would you excuse me?” she said. “I’ve got to see to dinner. I’ll be back with cocktails.”

Paul offered Chris a seat, then returned to his desk and loaded his pipe. “I’ve been listening to the news,” he said. “I hear you got with the old man.”

“Seems strange keeping this position with the clock running out.”

“Both Russia and Germany have pushed us around for centuries. There’s actually little to choose between them. Well, the hell with it Chris, we’ve missed you. How have you been?”

“Running.”

Much of the tension in Chris had eased. The warm welcome, the small talk. Either Paul was totally ignorant or expedient. Or he was playing some sort of game with great skill. Whatever it was, Paul did not want an ugly scene, and that was a relief.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” Paul said abruptly. “Been called up. More than likely I’ll be stationed with the surgeon general’s staff in Krakow—paper work. Been so long since I practiced medicine, I begged off line duty for the sake of the army. Works out well, they need administrative help.”

Chris was both glad and sorry at the pronouncement. Nagging thoughts buzzed around inside him. “See here, Paul,” he wanted to say, “Deborah and I love each other very much. It’s nothing we planned ... just happened. I want you to give her her freedom.”

The words never found their way beyond nagging thoughts. How can you say to a man who is leaving for war, “I want your wife. Incidentally, have a nice time at the front?”

Why did Paul Bronski have to be such a decent sort? That’s what made it so damned lousy. Bronski was a wonderful person. And any desire Chris had to create a scene suddenly melted.

“Chris, you and I haven’t known each other tremendously long as some friendships go. You know how it is. With some people you work with them all your life—like myself and Dr. Koenig—and never really know them. Another man can walk into a room and in ten minutes you become friends—real friends. I think you and I are that kind.”

“I hope so, Paul.”

“I’ve been a very lucky man. In addition to my position and my family, my father left me a considerable estate which I have been able to enlarge.” Paul slid the brown envelope across the desk.

“If something should happen to me ...” he continued.

“Oh, come now.”

“Good friends don’t have to make small talk, Chris. Poland doesn’t have a chance, does it?”

“No—not really.”

“Even if I do get through, which I certainly anticipate, they’re going to make it hard on us. With your connections and freedom of movement and with the possibility of an occupied Poland, you are in the best position of anyone I know to convert my estate into Swiss or American holdings.”

Chris took the envelope and nodded.

“You’ll find everything in order.”

“I’ll take care of it right away. I have a friend leaving for Bern next week. He can be trusted. Any preference in investments?”

“German munitions seem like a good bet.”

They both laughed.

“My bank is good and conservative. They’ll know the answers,” Chris said.

“Good. Well ... you hold all my fortunes. One more thing. If anything should happen to me, I know you will see to it that Deborah and the children are taken out of Poland.”

Chris’s mouth went dry. All the rest of it was what one friend does for another. But this seemed as though he were willing Deborah to him. Chris looked into Paul’s implacable eyes. Revealing, yet not revealing. If he really knew, he had carried it quietly. He had veiled the pain it must have caused. But isn’t this the way Paul Bronski would do things? He was a gentle man as well as a shrewd man. Wouldn’t he have thought it out and already forgiven both Deborah and him? Or maybe Chris was overdramatizing everything. Perhaps Paul did feel their friendship deep enough to ask this.

Nothing Paul said or did gave the slightest clue to what was really behind his expression.

Chris folded the envelope and put it in his inside pocket Deborah entered with two glasses of sherry for herself and Paul and a martini for Chris.

“You two look so grim.”

“Chris was explaining the meaning of the news to me, dear.”

“Rachael is playing the piano. Come on into the parlor.”

They stood around the piano, Paul obviously glorying in the extraordinary talent of his daughter. It was the same melody that was coming over the radio.

Chris felt himself back in bed looking at Deborah’s body. Paderewski ... Chopin ... a nocturne ...

Deborah lowered her eyes as her daughter’s slender fingers danced over the keys. And Chris lowered his.

Paul looked from one to the other. “Why don’t you play, dear?” he said to his wife.

She breathed deeply and slipped beside Rachael and took up the bass. There they were, Deborah and Rachael, beauty and beauty.

The mood of the moment was shattered by a bombastic roar at the door. Uncle Andrei had arrived. He had a second round of battle with Stephan and this time decided to lift fat old Zoshia off the ground and dance her around the anteroom.

“Chris!” he roared, belting De Monti in the back so that he lost half his martini.

Gabriela, filled with the weary happiness of love-making, drifted in almost unseen behind the roaring Ulan. “Keep playing! Keep playing!” ordered Captain Androfski.

Never known as a man adept in stifling emotions, he greeted Paul Bronski in a way that left little doubt of the iciness that existed between them. The words they exchanged testified they were straining for effect for Deborah’s sake.

“I hear you’ve been called up, Paul.”

“Yes, they’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel.”

“No,” Andrei retorted, “you’ll do a good job for them. You always do a good job.”

“Why, thank you, brother-in-law.”

There were “ohs” and “ahs” regarding the beauty of the table from Gabriela, Chris, and Paul when dinner was called. Andrei looked up and down for something that was not there. He caught an angry signal from his sister and only then did he seat himself in sulking quiet.

It was a splendid meal, one particularly made to please Andrei. During the gefilte fish and horse-radish the conversation bemoaned the state of the theater in Warsaw. The best plays, always French, were slow reaching Warsaw this summer because of the crisis. Gabriela volunteered that the opera season would suffer too. Rachael hoped that the music would not be affected too much, and Deborah hoped so too, because if things went well the conservatory was going to let Rachael have her debut with a major orchestra.

The chicken soup was loaded with noodles. They talked about the Olympics. Stephan knew almost every statistic. Jesse Owens was great—but Uncle Andrei, who played forward on the Polish soccer team, was greater then Jesse Owens and the rest of the Americans put together. Where would Andrei play this year? Depended upon his situation with the army.

Roast chicken, stuffed helsel and noodle and raisin kugel. Chris reckoned he hadn’t had a good Jewish meal in months—he was glad Paul had talked him into coming. Gabriela asked for recipes, which Deborah promised to supply by phone next day. Stephan got restless.

Tea and rice pudding. Reflections of the university. Koenig to the dean’s chair? Isn’t he mixed up with the Nazis? Well, German or not, Franz Koenig was certainly entitled to the post.

Cognac. Rachael helped Zoshia clear the table. Stephan, who had lost all conversation before and after the Olympics discussion, disappeared.

And then, with the children gone, world politics.

All of this conversation, and Andrei Androfski had not uttered a word.

“Chris, Gabriela,” Paul Bronski said, “we have all endured the silent wrath of my brother-in-law, Captain Androfski. Fortunately it was not great enough to ruin my wife’s cooking. In his behalf I wish to ask forgiveness for his bad manners.”

“I agree with you, Dr. Bronski,” Gabriela said hastily. “Your behavior is shameful, Andrei.”

Andrei, suddenly exposed, grumbled a low rumble destined to increase in volume. “I promised my sister no arguments. I keep my promises despite the inconveniences it causes me.”

“I think it would have been better to argue and get it off your chest rather than sulk like Stephan and try to make everyone at the table as miserable as you,” Paul shot back.

“You promised, Paul. Stop baiting him,” Deborah said.

“Let Captain Androfski speak before he explodes.”

“Paul, you’re leaving in the morning. Let’s not have an argument tonight?” Deborah pleaded.

“Why, dear? Don’t you want me to remember home as it always is?”

“I am a man of my word,” Andrei said. “But I also remember my home as it always was. Friday night and I sit at my sister’s table and there are no candles or benediction.”

“Is that what has been bothering you, brother-in-law?”

“Yes, it is the Sabbath.”

“We stopped facing east a year ago, Andrei.”

“Oh, I knew it was coming. I didn’t know you could break her down so quickly. I remember when we lived in the slums on Stawki Street. God, we were poor. But we were Jews. And when we moved to, that fancy neighborhood on Sliska Street and Momma died, I had a sister then who was the head of a Jewish house.”

“Andrei, let’s stop this here and now,” Deborah said.

Chris and Gabriela were suddenly trapped in the midst of the flying words of a family feud. They looked helplessly at each other as Andrei sprang to his feet and slammed his napkin down.

“Dr. Bronski started this. Not I. Deborah, I sat with Stephan and talked to him. He does not even know he is a Jew. What happens when he becomes thirteen? Your only son not given a bar mitzvah. I’m glad Momma and Poppa are not alive to see this day.”

Paul Bronski seemed to be delighted in having opened Andrei up. “Deborah and I have been married sixteen years. Isn’t it about time you got onto the idea we wish to live our own lives without consultation from you?”

“Paul, I am Andrei Androfski, the only Jewish officer in my Ulany regiment. But every man knows who I am and what I am.”

“I am Dr. Paul Bronski and they know who I am too. Just a minute, Andrei. I explored your galloping Zionism. It isn’t my way to salvation. It didn’t appeal to me either.”

“And your name didn’t appeal to you either, did it, Paul? Samuel Goldfarb. Son of a Parysowski Place peddler.”

“You are so right, Andrei. Nothing about Parysowski Place appeals to me. Not its poverty or its smells or the weeping and wailing, waiting for the Messiah to come. The Jews are the ones who have caused their own troubles in Poland, and I want to live in my country as an equal, not as an enemy or a stranger.”

“And does that justify your sitting on the council of the Students Union, those dirty little fascists who throw stones through the windows of Jewish booksellers?”

“I didn’t back those actions.”

“Nor did you try to stop them. You know why? Well, I’ll tell you. You follow a coward’s path.”

“How dare you?” Deborah said.

“It is you who is the coward and not I, Andrei, because I have enough courage to say that Judaism means nothing to me and I want no part of it. And you go to your holy-roller Zionist meetings not believing what you hear, looking for false salvation.”

The words rained down on Andrei like blows. Paul had struck a nerve and his foe turned white and trembled and the room grew breathlessly quiet, waiting for that short fuse to sizzle to the bomb. But Andrei spoke in a deliberate, trembling rattle. “You are a fool, Paul Bronski. Being a Jew is not a matter of choice. And one sweet day soon, I fear, it will crash down on you and destroy all your logic and smart talk. God, you’re in for a rude awakening, because you are a Jew, whether you want to be or choose to be—or not.”

“Stop it!” Deborah screamed. “This is my home. You will never do this again if you want to set foot in here, nor will you ever see Stephan or Rachael. Paul is my husband. You will respect him.”

Andrei hung his head. “I—should do something about my temper,” he said softly. “I have caused a scene in front of guests. Why should I care, really, so long as you are happy?”

“I am happy,” Deborah said.

“It is only ... Your words—and your eyes do not march to the same tune.”

Andrei walked from the table quickly.

“Andrei!” Deborah called. “Where are you going?”

“To drink. To drink and drink and drink to Dr. Paul Bronski, the king of the converts!”

Deborah started after him. Gabriela quickly stepped from the table and blocked her way. “Let him go, Deborah,” she said. “He is all wound up like a piece of spring steel from the tension on the border. You know Andrei, he will be here tomorrow with apologies. Let him go.”

The slam of the front door resounded like a cannon shot throughout the house.

“Chris, keep an eye on him, please,” Gabriela said.

Chris nodded and followed without a word.

When Chris was gone, Deborah sank into her chair, ashen-faced.

Paul Bronski, feeling contented as a Cheshire cat, soothed, “Don’t let him hurt you so, dear.”

Deborah looked up through tear-filled eyes. “He knew ... he knew. And that is what hurts. My husband is going away and I wanted to light the candles tonight like a Jewish mother—and Andrei knew.”

And all the cunning of Paul’s traps slammed in on him in an unexpected and stunning defeat and he sagged and walked toward the door.

“Paul!” Deborah ordered sharply. “See Gabriela home.”

“No, that’s all right, Deborah. Let’s you and I have another cup of tea and then I’ll find my rampaging cavalier in an hour or so. And don’t you worry about Andrei—I am the one who loves him. And sometimes, dear Lord, it is almost worth the pain.”

Chapter Six

THE REVOLUTIONARY ACTIVITIES OF Fryderyk Rak had made it increasingly more dangerous for him to live in Poland partitioned between Russia, Germany, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He went into self-imposed exile along with many patriots. In France he established himself as one of the leading hydroelectric engineers in Europe.

After the war, in 1918, when Poland had returned to statehood, Fryderyk Rak returned to Warsaw with his wife and daughters, Regina and Gabriela. The new Poland was filled with urgent needs. A hundred years of occupation had left it in a medieval condition. Hydroelectric projects were given an urgent priority. Fryderyk Rak was one of the few Poles with training and experience to cope with the challenge.

He gained neither great wealth nor fame, but a fair measure of each. His most impressive contribution was the part his firm of engineers played in the building of Gdynia. The Versailles Treaty had given new Poland a route to the sea through the Polish Corridor. The only port at the time was Danzig, a so-called “free city” fraught with political dynamite and largely inhabited by unfriendly Germans. Common sense made the building of a Polish seaport a necessity, and thus Gdynia was created.

In exile, he had become a rabid skiing enthusiast. With the first snow bursts of winter he would pack the Rak family off to the Alps. His doctor warned him there were slopes for thirty-year-olds and slopes for fifty-year-olds, but he indulged in his inbred stubborn Polish pride by defying the advice and finding the most dangerous, swiftest ways to get down the mountainsides. He died at the age of fifty from a heart attack at the bottom of a treacherous run called K-94, aptly nicknamed, “the butcher,” and left behind him a well-endowed widow and her two daughters.

In her bereavement, Madam Rak turned to the comfort of her only close living relative, a brother in Chicago. She came out of her period of mourning well stocked with suitors of Polish descent and saw little reason to return to the old country, never having shared Fryderyk’s passion for it. Regina, the oldest daughter, was a rather plain, rather plump girl who was completely content to marry a nice Polish boy whose family imported Polish hams and become an American housewife with a home in Evanston, within gossiping distance of Mother.

Gabriela, the youngest, was of her father’s breed; independent, stubborn, and self-centered. Fryderyk Rak had been a liberal man and an indulgent father. Her uncle, however, had taken his position as head of the family and protector of his widowed sister and her offspring with complete seriousness. He had brought with him from Poland much of the old-country traditions of family tyrant Gabriela rebelled. Warsaw and life with Father were her happiest memories. She received an impressive education from stern nuns in expensive and exclusive Catholic girls’ schools, where she prayed each night that the Virgin Mother would help her get back to Warsaw.

As soon as she was of legal age and came into her part of the inheritance, she made straight back. Gabriela’s mastery of English, French, German, and Polish and her American education brought her a job with the American Embassy as a teacher. Later she became a nearly indispensable member of the staff and was the only Polish national permitted to work on classified material.

The allowance from her father’s estate and her job allowed her to enter that upper echelon of society which had made Warsaw the Paris of the East. There was a never-ending circle of culture and trivia and romance. Gabriela was an extremely pretty girl. Her calendar never lacked for dates. She was a classic Polish beauty with white-blond hair and sparkling eyes, but a smaller, petite version.

Like many world travelers, she developed a great degree of sophistication, enjoying flirtations and being romanced. Every few months there was a proposal of marriage to weigh and discard. Gabriela enjoyed her freedom. She measured her relationships with a rather cold-blooded shrewdness. She was content in Warsaw. This was the place—it always was. She realized that she would eventually find the man to go with the place, but life was good and she was in no hurry. Her only indiscretion had been a forgivable girlhood fling with an instructor whose after-school instructions were unforgivable.

When Gabriela left the Bronski house, she began her search for Andrei and Chris at Jerusalem Boulevard, knowing that neither of them did any serious drinking south of there. She checked newsmen’s and Zionists’ hangouts until she picked up their trail. Once on the scent, she quickened her search, as they had left their calling cards in the form of two medium-sized disturbances and one tiny brawl.

She entered the Bristol Hotel and made straight for the little bar inside the entrance of the night club. A new South American band was playing the latest tangos. Tangos were all the rage now. Perhaps, Gabriela thought, if Andrei is not too far gone, I can bring him back here to dance. He is such a lovely dancer when he wants to be.

She adjusted her eyes to the darkness and warded off the advance of a lone male in a crisp, authoritative voice.

“Yes, ma’am,” the bartender said, “they sure were here. Left about a half hour ago.”

“In what condition?”

“Soused. Mr. de Monti a little worse off than his officer friend.”

Well, there go my tangos, Gabriela thought.

“Any idea of where they were going?”

“Mr. de Monti usually likes to cap off his benders in the Old Town. Says he likes to drink in Polish folklore.”

Gabriela stopped for a moment in the lobby and stared into the ballroom. It was filled with elegant Polish officers in uniform and elegant ladies in the latest Paris gowns and bearded, beribboned diplomats. It was a high-ceilinged room with dark mahogany paneling twisted into ornate gingerbread and herringbone parquet floors polished to a dazzle. Floor-to-ceiling mirrors alternated with floor-to ceiling tapestries depicting grim Polish heroes on statuesque white horses with billowing manes leading determined troops into battle. The immense crystal chandelier sparkled, and the elegant ladies and gentlemen hopped around the room in a counterclockwise circle in step with a lively polka. And when the music stopped, the gentlemen bent from the waist and kissed the ladies’ hands. Some responded with flirtatious eves from behind fans and others by looking off in boredom.

It was as though Gabriela looked at two different centuries from the slinky night club to the grand ballroom. The music faded as she walked north to the Old Town. It was balmy out, and the later theater- and movie-goers wandered along arm in arm and the streetwalkers prowled for business and the droshkas rolled by, holding cuddling couples.

She stopped for a moment on the central bridge and leaned on the rail. Far below, the commuter trains loaded up and sped over the river to Praga.

Gabriela hummed the polka to herself and was soon steeped in nostalgia. It was on a warm night like this that she had met Andrei and it was in a big, brilliant ballroom. Good Lord, Gabriela thought, has it been only two years? It seemed hard to recall a life between her father’s death and meeting Andrei. Only two years ... only two years.

The Seventh Ulany Brigade held its annual officers’ affair at the Europa Hotel. This was the eighth in a line of twenty-six events that illuminated the fall and winter season. The Seventh Ulanys had a particularly long string of great cavalry charges which could trace its beginnings back to the first king, Casimir the Great, in the Middle Ages. Therefore, the Seventh Ulany affair always brought out the cream of Warsaw.

Gabriela Rak, as usual, was nearly crushed by the overeager band of bachelor officers. They were particularly out of step, more pompous than the Second and Fourth Ulanys combined, and their humor less amusing than that of any regiment of the season.

At the end of the first hour of violent polkas Gabriela retreated to the sanctity of the powder room to rearrange herself for the second round.

Her closest friend, Martha Thompson, wife of her immediate superior at the Embassy, had a cigarette with her. Martha was a clever woman, a mother of three who retained that particular American chic.

Gabriela was bored. The new season was eight grand balls old and nothing was in prospect for even a mild flirtation.

Martha Thompson, on the other hand, was unvarnished in her enthusiasm. “Aren’t they all so beautiful in their boots?” she said.

“Good Lord, Martha, you can’t be serious. I’ve never seen so many fishy-eyed officers in a single brigade.”

“Trouble with you, Gaby, you’ve driven off all the serious contenders. You’re a pampered, spoiled little girl.”

“I’ve got an abnormal desire to crack some of them over the skull when they bow and slobber on my hand.”

“I kind of like it. Well, young lady, don’t wake one morning and find that the only thing left that’s any good is much married—or full of complications. Take a stupid one and train him your way.”

Gabriela smiled. “Come on, Martha, let’s have another go at it.”

She braced for the next onslaught and re-entered the ballroom on Martha’s arm. Both of them saw him at the same time. In fact, every pair of eyes seemed set on the door as the epitome of a Polish cavalry officer, Lieutenant Andrei Androfski, entered. After that second of awesome silence, which he sensed, he was engulfed by adoring, back-clapping cronies and was soon explaining with bravado how he had performed his latest athletic feat, the winning of the light heavyweight wrestling championship of the Polish Army.

“Isn’t he yummy,” Martha said.

Gabriela was still staring.

“Who is he?”

“Forget about him, Gaby. You’re really bucking city hall. No one has been able to solve him.”

“So?”

“Some say he’s a Tibetan monk who has taken chastity vows. Others say he has mistresses stashed all over Warsaw.”

“Who is he?”

“Lieutenant Androfski.”

“The Tarzan of the Ulanys?”

Martha sighed. “Well, back to my drab old reliable husband.”

Gabriela took Martha’s elbow. “Have Tommy introduce me to Lieutenant Androfski.”

“Well, well. A new hat at Madam Phoebe’s says you can’t get him to see you home.”

“I’ll meet you there at noon. I know just the one I want.”

When Thompson introduced Andrei to Gabriela, he neither bowed nor kissed her hand. He nodded politely and waited for the usual words—“So you’re the famous Andrei Androfski!”

“I didn’t catch your name,” Gabriela said.

A clever opening gambit, Andrei thought. “I know your name, Miss Rak. Like so many, I am an admirer of the work of your late father, so my name is unimportant. You can just snap your fingers and say ‘hey you’ and I’ll know you are addressing me.”

It won’t be such a dull evening after all, Gabriela thought.

What a lot of nonsense, Andrei thought, to play Victorian fencing games with spoiled brats.

“I have the next set of dances open, Lieutenant.”

Brother, he thought this one doesn’t even play coy. Works without a fan. Moving in for the kill already. Well, let’s look it over. Pretty little thing all right, a little on the lean side ...

“You do dance, Lieutenant?”

“As a matter of fact I am an excellent dancer, but frankly I do it only as an accommodation.”

Well! Does he know it.

“If it annoys you so much, why did you bother to come?”

“My colonel ordered me to come. You see, I have covered my brigade with glory.”

Of all the fantastic conceit!

Gabriela was about to walk off but saw Martha Thompson out of the corner of her eye. Martha was nudging Tommy and snickering. The music started.

“I am certain you won’t have any trouble finding a partner, Miss Rak,” Andrei said. “There’s a whole line of stags drooling for you over there.”

As he started his retreat Gabriela impulsively snapped her finger and said, “Hey you.”

Andrei walked toward her slowly, put his arm about her, and whisked her onto the dance floor. He was not boasting about his prowess as a dancer. Every female eye in the room watched them enviously. Gabriela was furious with herself for behaving as she knew a thousand girls had done before. But she liked being in his arms. They were nicer than any pair of arms she had been in for a year. This made her angrier, because he was managing to convey the feeling that he would just as soon be dancing with a broom.

The thought of bringing this egotistical roughrider to heel began to delight her. What a wonderful idea to torment him! How lovely to end the evening giving Lieutenant Androfski just enough to make him plead ... then slam the door in his face. First the hat from Martha Thompson.

“I should like you to see me home later,” she said at the end of the set of dances.

Her trap was swift and complete. When one is playing the game at a grand ball and one is a Ulan, it would be an unpardonable discourtesy to reject a lady’s “request.”

“Perhaps your escort may take exception,” he answered.

“I came with Mr. Thompson of the American Embassy—and Mrs. Thompson. I am quite free, Lieutenant—or is it necessary for me to get it in the form of an order from your colonel?”

He smiled weakly. “I will be delighted.”

As the automobiles were being driven up to the entrance, Mr. Thompson offered them a ride.

“It is so nice and balmy out, why don’t we walk, Lieutenant?”

“If you’d like.”

“Good night, Tommy. Good night, Martha. Don’t forget—Madam Phoebe’s at noon tomorrow.”

It was late and the streets were empty except for a few drunks. There was only the sound of their own footsteps and a very distant droshka.

Gabriela stopped suddenly. “I was terribly silly and rude to you,” she said, “and I shouldn’t have forced you to bring me home. If you would see me to a droshka—”

“Nonsense. I’ll be glad to take you home.”

“You don’t have to be polite any more—we are off battle limits.”

“Matter of fact,” Andrei said, “I was a little bit rough on you too. I really don’t behave like a pompous ass. I like you better now that I know you work for a living.”

He offered her his arm, and she took it and they crossed the street. She smelled good and she felt good and he was wonderfully aware of her. He whistled softly to hide his feelings.

“I knew you were trying to anger me,” she said. “I watched you after we danced. You are really very shy and self-conscious, you know.”

“I don’t want to sound as if I’m bragging, but—I guess everyone expects me to act a certain way.”

“And you don’t really like it, do you?”

“No, not always. Especially at these dances ...”

“Why?”

“Never mind.”

“No, tell me.”

“I don’t have very much in common with the people who go to grand balls.”

“A famous Ulan like you—all those adoring men and women ...”

“I don’t belong with them.”

“Why?”

“I’m not going to spoil your evening with all the serious, complicated things I am.”

They walked in silence for the final block. Both of them had moved too quickly to that strange feeling of helplessness at the discovery that they were suddenly infatuated with each other, and it was frightening for them. The game was over for Gabriela. He had behaved nicely and she did not wish to play the tease but wanted to know more about this man who could be a peacock one moment, then sink into boyishness in another.

Her flat was in a large old mansion on the Square of the Three Crosses facing St Alexander’s Church. She stopped before the door and fumbled in her purse for her key and handed it to him. Andrei unlocked the door and handed the key back.

“Good night, Miss Rak,” he said.

They shook hands.

“Lieutenant Androfski. I was brought up in America, as you know, and sometimes we do things a little differently. Would you consider me terribly brash if I said I would like to see you again, very soon?”

He took his hand from hers slowly and became pitifully and awkwardly shy. “I am afraid not, Miss Rak,” he said quickly, and turned and walked off.

Gabriela was stunned at her own words, more stunned at his action. She ran up the steps, watery-eyed, confused, and hurt and angry.

A large group of American VIPs were flying in from Paris. It included three congressmen and their wives and an advisory board of industrialists for a prospective American loan to build a dam on the Warta River.

“We want to help get this loan pushed through,” Thompson said to Gabriela. “I’ve got to be away in Krakow when they arrive. Can you make up their itinerary and handle them for two days till I get back?”

“Anything special you want them to see?”

“The usual junk around Warsaw. Lunch with the Ambassador, press conference, whatever is going at the opera and theater. Meanwhile, draw up a list for their reception.”

“Will do. Don’t worry about a thing.”

“Here’s all the dope. Look this over. Play it to Congressman Galinowski, big Polish district in Gary. Stay close to Cranebrook; he talks too much.”

“Tommy, the last time we had wives, the Ministry of Information sent over a real creep to escort them around. Why don’t we try someone else?”

“Like what?”

Gabriela shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. Why not—well, get one of those big Ulany officers. The Seventh Ulanys have a dozen real charmers who speak English.”

“Oh, sister,” Thompson mumbled. “He’s already cost me one hat.” He flicked the inter-com and spoke through it. “Mildred. Call up the commanding general at the Citadel. On that group of VIPs coming in day after tomorrow, we’re going to need an escort for the wives. Make it important ... big loan to Poland involved. See if you can get Lieutenant Andrei Androfski—from the Seventh Ulanys—placed on detached duty for PR. Have him report to Miss Rak.” He flicked off the switch. Gabriela’s face was crimson. “Just call me Cupid Thompson.”

If Andrei was livid with rage, which he was, he did nothing to show it. He reported to Miss Rak and took his orders with complete detachment and oozed Polish charm playing escort to the three elderly but appreciative American ladies. Andrei even managed to hold his temper when one of the ladies discovered he was on the national soccer team and insisted he take off his boots so she could see the muscles in his calves.

At the end of the third day he delivered them to their suites and reported to Miss Rak at the Embassy.

“I must say, everyone is commenting on my masterstroke of public relations. You have made a noble contribution to a dam on the Warta River.”

“Thank you,” Andrei said stiffly.

“In fact, Lieutenant, they are so pleased with your company, they particularly asked if you would escort them on a two-day trip to Krakow while the committee surveys the proposed dam site.”

“Miss Rak,” Andrei said, “I feel I am denying fellow officers a tremendous experience and wish to share this duty with some others—”

“But they particularly asked for you. You do want to see that dam on the Warta?”

“Miss Rak. To hell with the dam on the Warta. I hurt your pride the other night and you have made me eat humble pie. You win, I lose. Since I have been taking those—those—nice ladies around Warsaw my brigade has lost an important soccer match and my home is dying of loneliness. You will have to find someone else to assume this pleasurable duty, because it will take a court-martial to bring me back tomorrow.”

“I think that is terribly un-Polish of you.”

“Will you let me return to my brigade?”

Gabriela smiled. “If you take me home.”

This time when he handed her the key she walked through the door, leaving it open. “Come on up,” she said.

Andrei followed awkwardly into a small but tastefully and lavishly furnished living room. The luxury seemed to add to his discomfort. She threw open the french doors and stepped out on the balcony overlooking the Square of the Three Crosses. Andrei stood near the front door, fiddling with his hat.

“Close the door and come on in. I won’t bite you.”

As he reached the balcony, Gabriela spun around, her eyes ablaze with anger. “You are very right, Lieutenant. I have never suffered such humiliation.”

“You’ve had your revenge.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“I wish you wouldn’t make an affair of honor out of this.”

“I have never chased a man in my life, nor have I ever been rejected.”

“My, what an angry little terrier you are.”

“I made it obvious that I found you attractive. I would like to know exactly why you delight in making me feel like some sort of cheap trollop.”

“I told you. I don’t like places like the grand ballroom of the Bristol—or here. I don’t belong here.”

“You must certainly know that with a wink of your eye you could obtain the family fortunes of every eligible spinster in Warsaw.”

“I have no desire to be anything but what I am.”

“And what are you?”

“I am a Jew. I am not inclined to do the things necessary to reach a position I don’t covet in the first place. To be sure, I’m one of those good Jew boys. I can throw a javelin farther and jump a horse higher than almost any man in Poland. So, you see, there’s a gentlemen’s agreement in the Ulanys not to mention publicly my tainted ancestry.”

“Is that any reason to treat me as you did?”

“Miss Rak, I don’t know how advanced your American education was, but in Poland it is the general consensus we use nice tender young Catholic girls like you for sacrificial offerings.”

Gabriela walked back into the living room and braced herself against a lamp table and blew a long, deep breath. “Well, I asked for it. I owe you an apology. At least my pride has been served. I thought you disliked me.”

“Not at all. I like you very much.”

“Underneath that layer of bluster you are a very sensitive man.”

“I’m engaged in serious work. I only serve half time in the army.”

“What kind of work?”

“You wouldn’t be interested.”

“I think I would.”

“I am a Zionist.”

“Oh yes, I’ve heard something about it Redemption of Palestine or something like that.”

“Yes, something like that.”

“Don’t be so touchy. What do you do?”

“I’m an organizer and on the executive board of an organization called the Bathyrans.”

“Bathyrans? What an odd name.”

“It was a group of Jewish warriors sent out by Herod to defend against infiltrators. ... Look, this doesn’t interest you.”

“But it does. And what do your Bathyrans do?”

“We follow certain principles of Zionism, which tells us we must re-establish our ancient homeland in Palestine, and we run an orphanage and have a farm outside Warsaw. On the farm we train youngsters in the rededication to the land. When we are able to raise enough money, we buy a piece of land in Palestine and send off a new group to start a colony.”

“Why on earth would you do that?”

Andrei’s patience snapped. “Because, Miss Rak, the Polish people have not allowed us to own or farm land and—” He stopped short and lowered his voice. “Let’s stop this. You don’t give a damn about Zionism and I feel like a fool here.”

“I am trying to be friendly.”

“Miss Rak, between Jerusalem Boulevard and Stawki Street over three hundred thousand people live in a world you know nothing about. Your high and mighty writers call it the ‘Black Continent.’ It happens to be my world.”

He put on his hat and walked toward the door.

“Lieutenant. All this—why does all this mean that we can’t be friends?”

Andrei walked toward her slowly. “What do you want from me? I am not interested in a romance.”

“Really ...”

“Stop this silly damned game. I am a poor man, but I don’t mind it in the least because I am doing something that makes me happy. I am and never will be anything you consider important. As far as anything in common, we may as well be living on different planets.”

Gabriela’s voice trembled. “I don’t know why I let you get me so angry. You are very presumptuous. Try to be friendly with someone, and immediately they’ve got illusions of grandeur.”

“I know exactly what’s going on in that shrewd little mind of yours and I’ll tell you how presumptuous I am. If you annoy me again I am going to rip every stitch of clothing off your body and I am going to make love to you in exactly the way you know I can.”

She was small, but her slap was mighty.

Andrei lifted her in his arms. “Scream and I’ll blacken both your eyes,” he said.

Gabriela was too terrified to know whether he was bluffing or not. He walked in the bedroom to the big canopied, satin-covered bed.

“On the second thought,” he said, “go out and get a little more flesh on you. You’re too skinny for me to trouble with.” He flung her on the bed and left.

“Did he do that!” Martha Thompson exclaimed.

Gabriela nodded and poured tea and sliced the apple cake.

“So what did you do?”

“Do? Nothing. I was absolutely terrified. You can imagine.”

Martha sipped her tea, nibbled on the cake, and sighed. “Oh dear, why doesn’t something like that ever happen to me?”

Suddenly Gabriela pulled out a handkerchief, turned her face, and began to sniffle. “Why, Gabriela Rak, I’ve never seen you cry.”

“I don’t know what’s gotten into me lately. I’ve been so jumpy since I’ve met him. All someone has to do is look at me sideways and I start to cry.” And she bawled. “No one has ever been able to get me so angry,” she sobbed unevenly. “He’s conceited and detestable. Oh God, I hate him!”

Martha sat alongside her on the couch and offered a sympathetic shoulder.

“I hate him!”

“Sure you do,” Martha comforted, “sure you do.”

Gabriela pulled away and brought herself under control. “I am behaving like a fool.”

“Welcome to this world of fools. You took a long time joining us, but you’re making up for it all at once. You’ve had this coming to you, Gabriela. You’ve been running the show all your life.”

“He’s a complete opposite of everything I’ve ever known. Like a stranger from a foreign land.”

“You know what your old Aunt Martha always said. The only good ones are either much married or full of complications.”

“Complications! The terrible part of it is that I’m scared to death of being snubbed again. I’ve done just about everything but throw myself at his feet, and that, I’ll never do.”

“You’re going to have to. Alternative, have Tommy send you to Krakow for a long trip.”

Gabriela shook her head slowly. “I didn’t think anything so simple could be so painful. I want to see him so badly I could burst. I just don’t know what to do.”

“Well, honey, no matter what this Lieutenant Androfski is, one thing is for certain. He is a man.”

Andrei was stretched out on his bed, his feet propped up on the iron bedstead. He stared blankly at the ceiling, ignoring Alexander Brandel, who was fishing through papers at the old round table in the center of the room.

“I am against appointing Brayloff to edit the paper. He is inclined to lean too much toward the Revisionists’ point of view. What do you think, Andrei?”

Andrei grunted.

“Ideally, Ervin Rosenblum would be perfect. However, we can’t pay him what he is earning on the outside. Maybe, if we could use Ervin in an advisory capacity ... I’ll talk to him. Now, Andrei, about the Lodz Chapter—you’re going to have to give their problems your attention right away.” Alexander stopped. “I’m maybe talking to the wall tonight? You haven’t heard a thing I’ve said.”

Andrei spun off the bed, shoved his hands in his pockets, and leaned against the wall. “I heard, I heard.”

“So what do you think?”

“To hell with Brayloff, to hell with Ervin Rosenblum, to hell with the Lodz Chapter. To hell with the whole goddamned Zionist movement!”

“So now that you’ve made your great proclamation, maybe you might tell me what is eating you up. You have been uncivilized for a week.”

“I’ve been thinking. Maybe I’ll stay in the army.”

Alexander Brandel muffled his shock at the pronouncement. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll predict you’ll be the first Jew to become Polish Chief of Staff.”

“I’m not joking, Alex. Here I am, twenty-six years old, and what am I? Fighting for a cause that’s all but hopeless. Putting on a big front all the time ... working the clock out ... living in rooms like this ... Maybe I’m crazy for not taking the one chance I’ll ever have to really be something. I walked today. I walked and I thought. I walked around Stawki Street where I lived when I was a boy, and it scared me a little—maybe that’s where I’ll end up when all this is over. And I walked to the Avenue of the Marshals and Jerusalem Boulevard. That’s where I could be if I set my mind to it.”

“And while you were walking, did you walk along the Square of the Three Crosses and past the American Embassy?”

Andrei turned around angrily.

“Thompson at the Embassy called me up and invited me to lunch today. It seems there is a young lady there almost as miserable as you are.”

“God Almighty! Can’t I even have a broken heart in privacy?”

“Not if you’re Andrei Androfski.”

“I don’t want a lecture about Jewish boys and shikses.”

Alex shrugged. “If a shikse was good enough for Moses, a shikse is good enough for Androfski. I know all the things you are thinking now. Why am I here? Why am I beating my brains out doing this? But if you are able to believe in Zionism the same way some of the priests and nuns believe in Catholicism and the same way the Hassidim believe in Judaism, then you will find the ultimate reward of peace of mind greater than any sacrifice.”

Andrei knew the words came from a man who could have gained great recognition and economic reward had he not chosen the path of Zionism. Somehow, Alex did not seem to be giving anything up. If only he could believe in Zionism like that.

“Andrei, you stand for something to all of us. We love you.”

“So I will lower myself in the eyes of my friends and I will hurt them by taking up with a Catholic girl.”

“I said we love you. The only way you could ever hurt your true friends is by hurting yourself.”

“Do me a favor and go home, Alex.”

Alexander Brandel put all his papers together and stuffed them into his battered brief case. He stuck his cap on his head and wrapped the muffler, which he wore summer or winter, about his neck, and walked to the door.

“Alex!”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry. I’ll—be off duty in a week. I’ll take that trip to Lodz right away. Maybe I should also swing around the country and see the chapters in Lublin and Lemberg.”

“That may be a good idea,” Alex said.

After Alex had left Andrei poured himself a half glass of vodka, downed it in a single swallow, and took up a caged pacing of the confines of the room.

He stopped and wound up his record player. A scratchy sonata struggled its way flatly out of the sound head. He turned off the lights except the one over the table in the center of the room and walked to his books. He took a book of Hayim Nachman Bialik, the prince of poets of Zionism.

“This is the last generation of Jews which will live in bondage and the first which will live in freedom,” Bialik had written. He was in no mood for Bialik. Another book. One filled with fury. Here. John Steinbeck, his favorite author.

IN DUBIOUS BATTLE

Innumerable force of Spirits armed,

That durst dislike his reign, and, me preferring,

His utmost power with adverse power opposed,

In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven

And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?

All is not lost—the unconquerable will,

And study of revenge, immortal hate,

And courage never to submit or yield;

And what is else not to be overcome?

Andrei filled his glass again. Now there is a man who understands, he thought. Steinbeck knows of fighting for lost causes. In dubious battle ... His battle ...

There was a soft, almost imperceptible knock on the door.

“Come in, it’s open.”

Gabriela Rak stood in the doorway. Andrei seized the edge of the table, daring not to move or speak. She walked across the room into the shadow of the books. “I thought I would take a walk north from Jerusalem Boulevard. I am intrigued by these three hundred and fifty thousand people from the Black Continent.” Her fingers ran over the backs of the books. “I see you read in Russian and English as well as Polish. What is this here, this odd script? It must be Yiddish, or Hebrew maybe? A. D. Gordon. They have a volume of A. D. Gordon at the Embassy library. Let me see now. “Physical labor is the basis of human existence ... it is spiritually necessary, and nature is the basis of culture, man’s elevated creation. However, to avoid exploitation, the soil must not be the property of an individual. “How is that for my first lesson in Zionism?”

“What are you doing here?” Andrei croaked.

She leaned against the books and stiffened, her eyes closed and her teeth clenched, and tears fell down her cheeks. “Lieutenant Androfski. I am twenty-three years old. I am not a virgin. My father left me a considerable endowment. What else would you care to know about me?”

Andrei’s hand pawed helplessly around the table. At last his fist smashed down on it “Why don’t you leave me alone?”

“I don’t know what has happened to me and I don’t seem to care. As you can see, I’m throwing myself at your feet I beg you, don’t send me away.”

She turned and wept uncontrollably.

And she felt his hand on her shoulder, and it was gentle. “Gabriela ... Gabriela ...”

From that moment when she was consumed by his great and wonderful power, all the things she had considered important to her way of life ceased to be important.

Gabriela knew with no uncertainty that there had never been nor ever would be again a man like Andrei Androfski. Those things which society and its religions and philosophies and economies had imposed upon them as great barriers came crumbling down. Gabriela had been a selfish woman. She suddenly found herself able to give with a power of giving that she did not realize she possessed.

For to her, Andrei was like David of the Bible. He was at one time all that was strong and all that was weak in a single man.

He had within him the power to snuff out a life in an angry fit. Yet there had never been a man who could touch her with such a gentleness.

He was a giant who lived his life for a single ideal. He was a helpless boy who became confused or pouted or angered at a seeming trifle.

He was a symbol of strength to his friends. He would get roaring drunk when the frustrations became too difficult.

But with him there were moments of electric flaring of emotions. There were moments of hurt and pain deeper than any she had known except at the death of her father. There were the great expectations fulfilled with the sensuous thrills of pure physical pleasure.

To her friends it seemed that her willingness to become the mistress of a Jewish pauper was a terrible calamity. For Gabriela, the things she surrendered seemed insignificant and indeed no sacrifice for loving a man who made her happier than she had ever been in her life.

Little by little she divorced herself from the treadmill about which she centered her activities. Gabriela accepted the hard fact that her affair with Andrei might never be resolved in a marriage. She understood that she must never step on the dangerous ground of tampering with his work. She knew he would not be changed over to any of her images. Andrei was Andrei, and she had to take him and everything he was as he was.

Andrei had at last met in Gabriela Rak a woman who could match him fury for fury, passion for passion, anger for anger. She often flared into those stubborn streaks of pride which would be resolved only when he humbled himself or blurted an awkward apology. He sat quietly and took without a whimper the wrath of her anger when he had been out on a binge. He instinctively knew when to back down from a conflict. For his reward he found moments he had never known. Moments when she felt his depression and frustrations over the failures in his work. In those moments she was able to reach him with compassion as he had never been reached before.

He knew he had tamed a wild mare, but one who always kept that streak of rebellion. Gabriela demanded her religious identity. He insisted that she not completely withdraw from all those things which had been her life, and he took many of her friends as his.

And they discovered that they had as many things in common as they once believed had kept them apart. They shared a mutual love of music and books and theater. On occasion he would admit he enjoyed dancing with her.

Gabriela did not strain herself for acceptance among his friends but entered part of his strange world and found those closest to him took to her with sincerity.

His trips around Poland and his leaves from the army always brought him home to days and nights of love-making which never wearied or slackened in intensity.

Only two years ago, Gabriela thought. Only two years since I met my Andrei. She watched from the bridge as the last commuter train left for Praga, then walked north again in pursuit of Andrei and Christopher de Monti.

Chapter Seven

FUKIER’S ANCIENT WINE CELLAR in the Old Town was submerged in noises and smoke and smells. The immense casks leaked age-old wines, which blended with the smells of ales and cheeses. The voices of rowdy bohemians were somewhat buffered by thousands of bottles lining the walls. Amid the uproar, a trio of gypsy musicians inched their way from table to table.

The gypsies stopped and hovered over the table, determined to entertain Andrei and Chris. Andrei emptied his mug, belched, and put a coin on the table. The violinist snatched it and downbeated the accordionist and an unwashed tamborine-rattling female vocalist.

“Jesus Christ,” Christopher de Monti mumbled, “Jesus Christ. Even the gypsies play Chopin.”

“Chopin is a national hero. Chopin gives us courage!”

“Oh balls! He was a tubercular little wart shacked up with a cigar-smoking French whore who cashed in on Polish misery.”

“Is that nice?”

The waitress fought her way to their table, slung down a pair of plates, a loaf of dark rye bread, and a small ham, along with more vodka.

The gypsies played “O Sole Mio.”

“Christ, that’s worse than Chopin,” Chris said.

Andrei gulped down a half pint of vodka and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve.

“Let us not digress from our conversation,” he said. “The Germans attack, we will counterattack, naturally. My steed, Batory, and I will be the first two into Berlin.”

Chris weaved and focused on the ham. He raised his fork, aimed, and plunged it deeply. “This is Poland,” he announced. He picked up a knife and cut the ham in two. “One slice goes to Germany. ’Nother slice goes to Russia. No more Poland. All gone. Andrei, tell them goddamn gypsies to blow. So anyhow, all your goddamn poets will write tired sonnets about the good old days when the noblemen kicked the piss out of the peasants and the peasants kicked the piss out of the Jews. Then! Some half-assed piano player will play benefit concerts to the Poles in Chicago. All Chopin concerts. And in a hundred years everybody will say—Jesus Christ, let’s put Poland back together—we’re sick of hearing Chopin concerts. And in a hundred and two years, the Russians and Germans will start up again.”

Andrei belched again. Chris tried to continue his lecture, but his elbow kept slipping from the table each time he tried to point to Russian Poland. The violin cried. And when a gypsy violin cried in Fukier’s, men cried too. “Chris, my dear friend,” sniffed Andrei, “take my sister away from that no-good bastard Bronski.”

Chris hung his head. “Don’t mention a lady’s name in a bar, sir. Goddamn broad.”

Andrei’s sympathetic hand fell on Christ’s shoulder. “Damned broad,” he agreed.

Andrei emptied, then refilled his mug. “Hitler’s bluffing.”

“Hell he is.”

“He’s scared of our counterattack.”

“Counterattack, my butt.” Chris’s fist struck the table. He spread it clean, shoving bottles and plates and glasses into one corner. “This table is Poland.”

“I thought the ham was Poland.”

“The ham is Poland A. This is Poland B. See the table, stupid? See how nice and flat it is? Perfect for tanks. The Germans have them. They got big ones, little ones, fast ones, heavy ones. Tried and tested in Spain. That General Staff of yours had any sense, they’d pull back now.”

“Pull back!” the Ulan officer cried in horror.

“Pull back, I said. Blunt the first German thrust on the Warta River. Then drop everything in back of the Vistula and make your stand.”

“Back of the Vistula! You dare insinuate we give up Silesia and Warsaw?”

“Hell yes. They’ll take it anyhow. Chopin or no Chopin. If you can hold a Vistula line for three or four months, the British and French will have to start something on the western front.”

“Oh, big strategist, De Monti—big strategist!”

“Just common sense and vodka.”

Gabriela crossed into the cobblestone square of Stare Miasto, the Old Town. It was surrounded on four sides by perfectly preserved five-story medieval houses that formed the showplace of Warsaw. The historical relics of Poland’s glory were preserved in authentic settings. Madam Curie was properly revered in a museum, and shops selling cut glass and national products made it a well-conceived tourist trap as well as a hearthstone of Polish sentiment.

At the far end of the square, Gabriela could hear the noise from Fukier’s. She walked in and looked around.

There they were, Chris and Andrei, their elbows on the table, their hands clasped, Indian wrestling. The mob had gathered around them, placing bets and rooting them on. Christopher de Monti was deceptively powerful, a carryover from his basketball days. It was he who was pressing Andrei’s wrist down slowly. Andrei was humiliated, as befitted a Ulany officer in a contest with a mere mortal. As Chris poured his strength into his hand and pressed downward, a roar went up from the crowd and the odds shifted quickly. Andrei’s face turned first red, then purple with strain, and the veins fairly leaped out of his neck.

Their wrists quivered.

Suddenly the innumerable pints of vodka caught up with Chris. He was unable to make the final pin. Andrei, sensing the weakness of his opponent, called on the reserve strength of a great athlete, and Chris wilted.

Utter silence gripped the mob as Andrei came inching back from the brink of defeat. The sweat rolled down Chris’s face as he tried to fight off the inevitable. He collapsed. Andrei made the kill with such speed and power that Chris was thrown right out of his chair and went sprawling into the spectators.

The Ulan officer stood up, wavering, and raised both arms over his head to receive his deserved accolades, then bent down to help his victim to his feet. Bloody, but unbowed, Chris’s hand lashed out, caught Andrei by the heel of his shiny boot, and sent him crashing to the floor. They both lay on their backs, convulsed with laughter.

“What in the devil are you doing down there!” she demanded.

“Whadda think I’m doing?” Andrei said. “I’m trying to get this drunken slob home.”

“It stinks in here,” Andrei said.

“I told you it was painted. Now be careful and don’t touch anything. It’s still wet.”

Andrei spilled the unconscious Chris on Gabriela’s sofa. He landed with a thud, his legs awry.

“You don’t have to be so rough,” she admonished. She knelt down and unlaced Chris’s shoes. “Take off his coat and tie. He’s so drunk, he’s liable to choke.”

Chris blurted out something about flat tables and Polish hams as Andrei fought him out of his clothing. Gabriela placed a pillow beneath his head, covered him with a blanket, and dimmed the lights.

Andrei hovered over him. “Poor Chris. Do you see the way he and Deborah steal looks at each other? As if they are both going to die of broken hearts. Poor Chris.”

“Get in there,” Gabriela ordered.

He staggered into the bedroom, flopped on the edge of the bed, and held his face in his hands.

“I’ve got to do something about my temper,” he mumbled. Andrei then berated himself roundly, but it was a monotone soliloquy heard only by himself. Gabriela entered with a large mug of steaming black coffee.

Andrei’s head dangled with shame. “I’m a son of a bitch,” he said.

“Oh, shut up and drink this.”

He stole a guilty look at Gabriela. “Gaby ... baby ... please don’t bawl me out ... please, baby.”

She took his cap off, unbuttoned his tunic, and wrestled his boots off. Andrei had reached that stage of drunkenness where words are thick but thoughts brilliantly clear. The coffee gave him a sudden resurgence. He looked up at his little Gabriela. She was so lovely.

“I don’t know why you put up with me,” he said.

She knelt before him and lay her head on his lap. Even in this state, his hands touched her hair with amazing tenderness.

“Are you all right, dear? Can we talk?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“When you’ve gone away in the past two years, a week to Krakow, or a week to Bialystok, or a week or two on maneuvers, it was never really too bad because I was always able to live for that moment I knew you would come storming up the stairs into my arms. But now you’ve been on regular duty—you’ve been gone nearly two months. Andrei, I almost died. At the Embassy we know how bad things really are. Andrei ... please marry me.”

He struggled to his feet, holding one of the four tall posters. “Maybe you’ll hate me the way you hate Paul Bronski for giving up his beliefs, but you mean more to me than being a Catholic does, and I’ll give it up and I’ll light the candles for you on your Sabbath and I’ll try to be all the things—”

“No, Gaby ... no. No ... I’d never ask you to do that.”

“I know how much you mean to other women. I can see the way they look at you. If you were angry with me and should go away for a night or two, I swear I’ll never question you or make a scene.”

“You make scenes now. You’d make scenes if we were married. Maybe I wouldn’t love you if you didn’t make scenes. Dear ... I ...”

“What, Andrei?”

“I have never said this to you, but it would be the proudest thing in my life if I were able to take you as my wife. It is only—I ... tell myself a hundred times a day that it is not true. It will not happen. But Chris is right. Poland is going to be conquered. God knows what the Germans will do to us. The one thing you don’t need now is a Jewish husband.”

Andrei’s words and their meaning were absolutely clear. “I see,” she said, deflated.

“God damn it all. God damn everything.” Andrei had that lost look about him that moved Gabriela to forget her own desires, for he was floundering and in trouble and needed her.

“What did Paul Bronski say to you tonight that brought all this on?” she asked.

“That bastard!”

“What did he say to hurt you so?”

Andrei sucked in a deep breath and reeled to the window, where he stared into the darkness. “He called me a phony Zionist—and he is right.”

“How can you say that?”

“No, he’s right, he’s right.”

He tried to clear his shrouded thoughts. He looked for Gabriela through bleary eyes. She seemed far away and out of focus. “You’ve never been on Stawki Street where the poor Jews live. I can see the garbage on the streets and smell it and hear the iron-rimmed wheels of the teamster wagons on the cobblestones. It was a kind of stink and humiliation that drove Paul Bronski out of there. Who can really blame him?”

Gabriela listened with terrible awe as the drunken outpour increased. Since she had known Andrei he had never spoken a word of his boyhood.

“Like all Jews, we lived through economic boycotts, and blood riots by the same students Paul Bronski leads. My father—you saw his picture?”

“Yes.”

“Just another one of those bearded old religious Jews nobody understands ... sold chickens. My father never got angry, even when they threw stones through his windows. He always said, ‘Evil will destroy itself.’ You don’t know the Krasinski Gardens—nice Polish girls don’t go there. It’s at the north end, where the poor people go on Saturday to look at trees and eat hard-boiled eggs and onions and pass gas while their kids fall into the fishponds. I had to deliver chickens for my father to the Bristol and Europa. I’d cut through the Krasinski Gardens. The gangs of goyim hung out there waiting for us little Jew boys. Every time they beat me up and stole my chickens we’d have to eat boiled potatoes for a week. I would ask my father, “Daddy, how long is it going to take for evil to destroy itself?’ And all he would answer was, ‘Run from the goyim, run from the goyim.’

“One day I was making my deliveries. I had a pal from the cheder—that’s our parochial school. Funny, I don’t even remember his name. But I can see his face so plain. He was skinny—half my size. We crossed Krasinski Square, and the goyim trapped us right in front of their goddamned cathedral. I started to run. But this kid—wish I could remember his name—he grabbed me and made me set the chickens down in back of us.

“Funny, not running. When the first one came to me I hit him. I could whip most of the kids in my neighborhood, but I never thought of hitting a goy. He went down to the pavement—he got up mad, his nose was busted. I hit him again, and he went down again and just lay there and moaned!—and I turned and looked at the rest of them, and they backed up and I kept walking forward and I ran at them and they ran away! I caught another one and beat the hell out of him. Me! Andrei Androfski from Stawki Street had beaten up two goyim.”

And he dropped from the elation of the memory of triumph back to his drunkenness. “That’s why I’m a phony Zionist, Gaby. I hate that damned Zionist farm. I don’t want to spend my life in little bare rooms over union halls. Bronski knows this—I’m not going to sit in any damned swamp in Palestine.”

“Then why, Andrei—why?”

“Because in the Bathyrans I have a dozen, two dozen friends who are together with me. So long as we hang together, no one can steal our chickens. All I want, Gaby, is to be able to live without running.”

Spent and weary, Andrei lay back on the bed slowly. “I forced them to make me a Ulany officer. I, Andrei Androfski, a Zionist leader, made them make me a Ulany officer. But I can feel their eyes on my back. Jew, they say to themselves—Jew. But they do not say it to my face. ...”

“Shhh, darling. You are not fighting now.”

“Gaby, I’m so tired. So tired of battling for everyone. I am tired of being the great Andrei Androfski.”

“It’s all right, dear. You rest now.”

She dimmed the lights and lay beside him and soothed him until he fell into a fitful thrashing sleep.

What is the best Sehora?

My baby will learn Torah,

Seforim he will write for me,

And a pious Jew he’ll always be.

Momma’s song. Momma’s lullaby. Andrei blinked his eyes open. His fingers felt the pillow. There was a bad taste in his mouth.

What is the best Sehora?

My baby will learn Torah ...

Andrei sat up quickly. He shook his fuzzy head. Gabriela awoke the instant Andrei did, but she lay motionless and watched him swing his legs to the floor, weave his way into his tunic and walk out of the french doors and stand on the balcony. A quiet, sleeping Warsaw was before him.

Seforim he will write for me,

And a pious Jew he’ll always be.

“Poppa,” Andrei whispered. “Poppa.”

Israel Androfski stood before him. His black coat stained and threadbare. His silver-and-black beard ungroomed because of weariness, and his eyes half closed with the strain of the hard life etched into face and posture.

Andrei could smell the poverty of Stawki Street.

“In cheder you will learn to find comfort in the Torah and the Talmud and the Midrash. You go to school tomorrow to begin your swim in the Sea of Talmud and gather the wisdoms which will give you the strength and understanding to live as a good and pious man all your life.”

Little Andrei babbled his excitement in Yiddish, eager to start his training in one of Warsaw’s six hundred Jewish schools.

Rabbi Gewirtz stood warming his hands on the fireless stove in a dingy room before a handful of shivering students.

“You see, Kinder, we Jews have been in Diaspora sincethe destruction of the Second Temple and the great dispersion nearly two thousand years ago. ...”

... In the Crimea during the Byzantine era, the Khazars, a war-like people, adopted Judaism, but in the tenth century the Khazars were defeated and dispersed by the Russians much as the Jews were driven from the Holy Land. The Russians swept them out and they have never been heard of since, and their empire was consolidated under Christianity of the Greek Orthodox leaning.

Jews suffered maltreatment during the years of their dispersion in all countries of their dispersion from massacres to expulsions. The fever of Jew baiting heightened to a new level during the Spanish Inquisition, when torture and bestiality were as common as daily prayer.

In the Dark Ages the Jews were blamed for the Black Plague and for witchcraft and for ritual murder.

But it was the Crusaders under the flag of Holy Purification and in the name of God who set out to kill every Jew in Europe. The massacres became so bloody that wave after wave of Jews fled from the fountainhead of butchery in Bohemia to the newly emerging kingdom of Poland.

Here the Jews were welcomed and this was their real beginning, along with the beginning of Poland itself. Jews were needed, for there was no middle class between the landed gentry and the peasants. The Jews brought with them their arts, crafts, trades, professions, and ability as merchants.

“And how was cheder today, Andrei?”

“The boys tease me because they say Andrei Androfski is not a Jewish name.”

“Aha! Well, it is a very Jewish name. It appears all down our family line. Our family were very old in France before they emigrated to Poland during the Crusades.”

“Poppa, why must you and Rabbi Gewirtz talk so much about history? I want to know about things happening today. Why do we spend so much time in the past?”

“Why?” Israel Androfski thrust his finger skyward and repeated an old Hebrew phrase. “Know from where you come. Before you know who you are and where you are going, you must know from where you come.”

And so Andrei learned that a series of Polish kings granted a number of charters guaranteeing religious freedom and protection to the Jews soon after their arrival in Poland from Bohemia.

However, this condition of security was short-lived, and not long after their arrival there opened a sordid, almost thousand-year parade of oppression against the Jews which never stopped but only varied in intensity from time to time.

It began as the Roman Church grew in power and consolidated its position as the state religion. The Jesuits of Posen and Krakow triggered Middle Age riots against the Jews, persisting in the spreading of lies about ritual murder libels.

The Jesuits received help from immigrant Germans who were the competition with the Jews in commerce. With Church help they managed to obtain a Jew’s tax, expulsion from competitive crafts and trades and professions. The feudal pans kept Jews from owning or farming land.

And so to Poland came the honor of creating one of the world’s first ghettos, an enforced separation of the Jews from the rest of the citizens by walling and locking them in.

Banned from participation in national life and from participation in the normal economic life, they were compelled to be a breed apart.

In their ghettos, limited in their means of livelihood, the Jews began their long tradition of self-rule and self-help. Banded together without choice, they intensified their studies of the Holy Books to find the answers to the thousand year-old dilemma.

“We are like a bird.” Rabbi Gewirtz said. “We are a long way from home and we cannot fly that far, so we circle and circle and circle. Now and again we light upon a branch of a tree to rest, but before we can build our nest we are driven away and must fly again—aimlessly in our circle ...”

Polish Jews turned bitter against their homeland. The Poles used the very difference which they had forced on the Jews to prove Jews were not like other people. The Jews had no identity as Poles. They spoke Yiddish, a language carried from Bohemia. They created their own culture and literature apart from the masses around them.

In 1649 the greatest calamity since the fall of the Temples crushed the Jews of Poland. Cossacks of the Ukraine, aided by the Tatars, staged a revolt against the feudal pans of Poland. In the wake of gory, savage fighting, the Cossacks became obsessed with the idea of slaying every Jew in Poland, the Ukraine, and the Baltics, and rivers of Jewish blood spurted from the swift-arcing, hissing Cossack sabers. In the frenzy to kill, the Cossacks often buried Jewish babies alive.

And, like the Arab world after the Mongol invasions, the Jews of Poland never recovered from the Cossack massacres.

Numbed from the butchery, they entered an era of desperation and sought a way out of the long black night through their Holy Books.

The cult of the cabala snowballed. The cabala, a study of mystic meanings of the Holy Books, was taught by cabalistic rabbis who preached the Zohar and the Book of Creation. Through cryptic numerology and mystics they sought to overcome the suffering of daily life by finding hidden meanings in the Bible.

Along with the cabalists came a parade of false messiahs. Self-declared messiahs proclaimed themselves the anointed leader to take the Jews back to the Holy Land. A desperate, anguished people disposed of reason and flocked behind them.

King of the frauds was Sabbatai Zvi, a Turkish Jew, who through distortions of the cabala “proved” himself the Messiah. Throughout the world of dispersed Jewry the elders and the rabbis from Amsterdam to Salonika, from Kiev to Paris, argued the validity of Sabbatai Zvi’s claims. It was the Polish Jewry who arose, drowning logic with the maddened hope that he could lead them to escape.

A crushing delusion. Sabbatai Zvi was converted to Islam and became a Mohammedan to escape the wrath of the Turkish sultan.

Jacob Frank, a Bohemian rabbi, relit the fires after Sabbatai’s death in Albania, but the Frankist sect carried out sex orgies and debasements of the Holy Laws. In the end, Jacob Frank was converted to Catholicism.

And all of the false messiahs fell, and the Jews of Poland sank deeper into a muck of despondency. From the depths of their despair emerged the Hassidim. Israel Baal Shem Tov erupted with yet another new cult which captured the imagination of the enslaved Jews in their ghetto dungeons. The Hassidim detached themselves from the world of daily tribulation and reality through frenzied prayer that transcended the pain about them. Wild! Leaping! Screaming! Moaning! The joy of prayer!

“Poppa! I don’t want to be a tailor or a chicken seller!” Andrei cried. “I don’t want to be a Hassid! I want to be like other people in Warsaw.”

Israel Androfski’s face saddened. He stroked his son’s curly bush of hair. “My boy will not be a chicken seller. You will be a great Talmudic scholar.”

“No, Poppa, no. I don’t want to go to cheder any more!”

His father raised his hand in anger, but the slap never came, for Israel Androfski was too gentle a man. He looked at the burning in his son’s eyes with puzzlement.

“I want to be a soldier—a soldier like Berek Joselowicz,” Andrei whispered.

Poland, partitioned, at constant war with Germany and Russia, ceased to exist as a state time and again in her long and bloody history. At the end of the 1700s she was again in the throes of one of her numerous rebellions, this time against the Russian Tsar on the east and the King of Prussia on the west. Desperate for manpower, the Poles allowed Berek Joselowicz, a Jew of Vilna, and Josef Aronwicz to organize a Jewish brigade, a radical departure from past principle. Five hundred of them took the field in the defense of Warsaw. Twenty of them survived. With the precedent set, the Jews answered the call to arms in Poland’s rebellions against Russia in 1830 and 1863, but as Russia gobbled Poland and the state disappeared from the face of the earth, a huge land ghetto was formed called the Jewish Pale of Settlement. Beyond the Pale, no Jew could travel or live.

And through the 1800s the web of economic strangulation, boycott, excessive taxation, and bestial pogroms continued. Murder of Jews was supported by the Tsar and overlooked by the Russian Orthodox Church. The Jews were driven into a position of mass destitution.

A few fumbling calls for reforms were heard, but the voices were far softer than the gangs of roving Jew killers.

And a new generation in the Pale emerged unsatisfied to continue Jewish existence as it had been through the black centuries. The new generation could not find peace in the cabala or the wild prayer of the Hassidim, nor would they follow false messiahs. To them, the old ideas had failed, and during the mid-1800s dynamic new ideas swept the ghettos of the Pale. Young Jews formed self-defense committees to protect the ghetto against the pogroms as they began to emulate the soldier Berek Joselowicz!

Then came the Lovers of Zion, the first practical move to organize colonies in the Holy Land.

The thousand religious groups, led by their rabbis, fought the new radicals who departed from traditional Jewish living, but the brush fires ran wild and each new pogrom made the desire for freedom more intense. Writers, dreamers, angry young men threw off the shackles of the past.

Theodor Herzl molded the hundred different ideas of a thousand years into a simple paper called “The Jewish State,” setting forth the credo that the Jews would never reach a status of equality until the re-establishment of their ancient homeland was achieved.

Herzl was hailed as a new messiah by some, was scorned as a new Sabbatai Zvi by others, but the father of modern Zionism had planted the seed of the new tree of hope for the Jews of the Pale.

As anti-Jewish riots spread over Europe at the end of the century, the urgency of Zionism heightened.

It was into this world of pogrom and flaming new ideas that Israel Androfski was born at the close of the century. World War I brought freedom to redeclare the state to Poland behind the legions of Pilsudski. Israel Androfski and most of Poland’s Jews listened to the words and ideals of Pilsudski and believed that after nineteen hundred years their emancipation had come. The Socialists and idealists rallied all of Poland behind him.

... And then Marshal Pilsudski abandoned the Jews and peasants and the workers of Poland to attain dictatorship with the age-old powers of the feudal gentry, the colonel’s clique, and the Church behind him. ...

To the Jews, another shattering disillusion as riots and unfair taxation and trade restrictions heightened against them.

“Andrei! What is! You carrying rocks in your pockets and fighting goyim in Krasinski Gardens?”

“Poppa, they started it. They attacked me when we began our deliveries.”

“I told you to run from the goyim.”

“I will not run.”

“God help me! God help me for a son like this. You listen to me. You will go to synagogue and pray and you will be a good Jew!”

They accepted Andrei outside the Jewish area because he could pit his strength against them and win. But behind his back he knew he was always “the Jew.” Always the Jew, no matter what he attained. Always the wall between them. Never able to be accepted ... what he craved the most eluded him.

“I have decided to join the Zionists, Poppa.”

“Those radicals! My son, my son. You have not been to synagogue for six months. You are now twenty years of age and you have not found out yet that the price of being a Jew calls for patience and prayer and acceptance of your position.”

“I’ll never accept it. Oh, Poppa, I cannot find what I want in the Talmud. I must look for myself. ...”

“Andrei,” Alexander Brandel said. “You must accept the commission in the Ulany. Do you realize what it means to all of us to have one of our boys, a Zionist, a Ulany officer? It has never happened. And pray God you’ll make the Polish soccer team for the Olympics in Berlin. Andrei ... do it for us.”

“If they would only accept me ... as ... not some sort of a freak!”

“I know, Andrei, how hard it is to carry this battle for us, but your back is strong and we need you.”

“We are like a bird a long way from home, circling aimlessly ... looking for a place to light and build a nest. But as soon as we cry we are driven from the tree and we must circle again. ...”

Israel Androfski lay on his deathbed and rasped to his bereaved boy, “And have you won your great battle for acceptance? Andrei ... return to a good Jewish life before it is too late. ...”

What is best Sehora?

My baby will learn Torah,

Seforim he will write for me,

And a pious Jew he’ll always be.

“Know from where you came.”

Dawn cast an ugly light on Warsaw. Andrei’s heavy eyes blinked at the sharpening outlines of the rooftops. He felt the presence of someone behind him.

“It is very chilly. You’d better come inside,” Gabriela said.

Chapter Eight

Journal Entry

WE ARE WITHIN AN inch of war.

The Polish delegation arrived in Berlin for last-minute talks but are without authority to make direct negotiations. It is the consensus that Hitler doesn’t really want to negotiate. His pact with Russia puts the Soviet army on the shelf for the time being, and no one is under the illusion that France and England are going to do very much if Germany attacks us.

I was finally able to get hold of Andrei. Ana Grinspan came up from Krakow, so we will be able to hold an executive meeting later this morning.

ALEXANDER BRANDEL

Throughout Warsaw bells pealed. They pealed from the towers of large and small churches and the cathedral. They pealed from St. Antoine’s and St. Anne’s and from the Carmelites’ and from Notre Dame and the Dominican and Franciscan churches and St. Casimir’s and the Jesuits’ and from the Holy Cross where Chopin’s heart is kept in a little black box near the altar.

Warsaw is filled with churches, and all their bells pealed. For it was Sunday.

A smattering of white sails billowed on the Vistula River to test out the first brisk late-summer breeze, and bathers and sunners packed the shore of the beach at Praga Park.

The Poniatowski Bridge and the Kierbedzia Bridge buckled with the heavy traffic to and from Praga as relatives exchanged visits.

Beneath the Poniatowski Bridge was the Solec district. And this was filled with the odor of freshly dropped horse dung, as most of the teamsters lived in Solec and stabled their horses in the courtyards alongside their homes.

In the winding steps beneath the bridge in Solec the police investigated the knifing of a well-known whore. However, the usual smuggling, mugging, fencing, prostitution, pickpocketing, gambling, and thieving which made the Solec the Solec had decreased, for most of the whores and hoodlums were in church.

All of Christian Warsaw, two thirds of its population, piously promenaded in and out of church. The day before, Jewish Warsaw, the other third, had piously promenaded in and out of synagogue.

It was a pleasant day, As Gabriela dressed for Mass she could see beyond her balcony into the square and along the Aleja Ujazdowska, where the elegant promenaded. The men cut fastidious figures with their homburgs and canes and spats and pin stripes, and there were the dashing army officers, and women elegant in Paris hats and Paris dresses and fur pieces.

The new rich paraded along Jerusalem Boulevard and the grand Avenue of the Marshals.

The hopeful young lovers and the soldiers of the rank and their girls promenaded up and down New World Street, looking longingly into the barred shop windows.

The visitors from the country flooded the Old Town Square to saturate themselves with Polish lore.

The neither rich nor poor filled the Saxony Gardens. And, since the super-nationalistic marshal, Pilsudski, had died, the crowds were allowed to spill into and examine the wonders of his personal botanical gardens in the Lazienki around his Belvedere Palace.

In the Old Town, boys took photographs of their girls posing on the medieval walls.

And the poor people went to the Krasinski Gardens to look at trees and grass and eat hard-boiled eggs and onions and pull their children out of the lake.

Amid squirting fountains and palaces and church bells, Warsaw promenaded and little girls in knee-length white stockings and bows and pigtails walked before parents who felt rather saintly after their visit to the holy domains and little boys ran after the little girls and pulled their pigtails.

In the middle of the broad sidewalks, life centered about the circular-shaped concrete billboard structures upon which handbills were posted announcing cultural events, news, bargains, and Irene Dunne movies.

The monuments of Pilsudski riding his horse, Stefan riding his horse, Casimir riding his horse, Poniatowski riding his horse, and Chopin merely standing were smothered with fresh-cut flowers in the Polish tradition of reverence to her heroes.

Over Pilsudski Square, Warsaw’s ground for political and military rallies, stood eleven massive columns forming an entrance to the Saxony Gardens, and in its center the eternal flame to the unknown soldier. This, too, was surrounded with cut flowers.

After church the rich went to the swanky Bruhl House and ate ices and sipped tea after their hour with God, and the poor stared at them from the street through the long, low windows. The rich did not seem to mind.

Not all of Warsaw was so reverent.

The Jews had celebrated their Sabbath a day earlier, and while their Christian brethren purged their sins the Jews quietly circumvented the stringent blue laws. The center of Jewish gangsterism on Wolynska Street smuggled and thieved, the textile workshops on Gensia bartered for raw material, and the stores of the building-material owners that lined Grzybow Square could be opened with the proper combination of knocks.

In the mixed Christian and Jewish quarters of the smart Sienna and Zlota streets, Jewish professionals and businessmen let their neighbors know they were good Poles and joined in the promenading.

And the bells pealed.

Everything seemed quite in place for a Sunday in Warsaw. That is, if you did not go near the tension-filled ministries or the rumor-riddled lobbies of the Polonia and Bristol and Europa. Or if you were not among those who stopped before the President’s Palace and watched and waited for word of a miracle which was not coming. Or if you were not in your home before the radios bringing invoices from the BBC and Berlin and America and Moscow. For under the normalcy, everyone seemed to know that the bells of Warsaw could well be sounding the death knell of Poland.

The meeting of the Bathyran Council was held in the flat of its general secretary, Alexander Brandel. His place faced the Great Synagogue on Tlomatskie Street and was conveniently near the Writers’ Club, which was the meeting place of the journalists, actors, writers, artists, and intellectuals who admitted they were Jewish. The Jewish journalists, actors, writers, artists, and intellectuals who did not admit they were Jewish met in another club a few blocks away.

A dozen routine matters, left unresolved during Andrei’s absence, were dispensed with, then the discussion turned to what they should do in the event of war.

“War will bring us to terrible times,” Alex said. “I do not think it is too premature to set up on an emergency footing. Perhaps even think about what we will do, God forbid, if the Germans come.”

Ana Grinspan, the liaison secretary, was up first. “The very first thing we should do is close ranks as never before. We must establish a system of communications between all our chapters in case of German occupation.”

Andrei was looking wistfully out of the window. When Ana began to talk, he turned and looked at her. She was still very attractive, he thought. She had been his girl before Gabriela. Funny, she is a lot like Gabriela. Ana was twenty-five and very Polish in appearance. She lived in Krakow and was from an upper-middle-class family. Most half Jews went to one of two excesses—an abnormal hate of their Jewishness or the embracing of it with an abnormal passion. When Ana discovered her father’s Jewishness she became a rabid Zionist. It was this obsession that cooled Andrei towards her. There are times when a woman must be a woman and to hell with Zionism. It’s too much to hear it going to bed and waking up. At any rate, their parting was completely civilized.

Ana spoke for ten minutes. No arguments about her point of view. Unity forever.

Tolek Alterman was on his feet. Dear God, please don’t let Tolek get wound up, Andrei thought. But Tolek was wound up. He was distinguished by a head of bushy hair, a leather jacket, and a leftist point of view. Tolek was the manager of the Bathyran training farm outside Warsaw. He had been to Palestine with a Poale Zion group and, like all of those who had been to Palestine, he had a holy arrogance about it. “We who have actually been there” was one of his favorite and most-used phrases to press an argument.

“War or no war,” Tolek was chanting loudly, “we are banded together because of mutual belief in a set of principles.”

Now, Andrei thought, he’ll ask us what those principles are.

“And what are those principles?” Tolek said. “They are the principles of Zionism. Poland and Russia are the wellsprings of Zionism because of the desire of our people for a homeland after centuries of persecution.”

Oh, for Christ sake, Tolek—we know why we are Zionists.

“To remain Zionists, we must continue to function as Zionists.”

He’s snaking into his weird traps of logic.

“The farm is living Zionism. We must continue to keep the farm going to train our people for their eventual goals—war or no war.”

Tolek then shifted into second gear. There was no denying that he had done a great job as manager of the farm. Before he took over, Andrei thought, we couldn’t grow weeds. Since then we’ve trained three groups of youngsters and they’ve established successful colonies in Palestine. If only he wasn’t so flushed with his sacred mission.

“Having been there myself ...” Tolek said.

Talk, talk, talk, talk.

Now it was Susan Geller’s turn to talk. “The Bathyran Orphanage in Zoliborz is one of the finest in Poland. We take care of two hundred youngsters. All of them are prospective colonists for Palestine. War will bring us more orphans. Nothing on earth is more important than our children. ...”

Tolek wants his farm, Susan wants her orphanage, Ana wants unity forever. Each one argues for his own self-interest. Well, Ervin is yawning. Good old Ervin Rosenblum. Our secretary for information and education hasn’t anything to say, thank God. Rosy is a social Zionist; he joined us looking for intellectual company—mostly Susan Eller’s. I wonder if they’ll ever get married.

Did I tell Styka about Batory’s left front hoof? It was a little tender after the last patrol. I’m certain I told him to have the veterinarian look Batory over. Maybe I didn’t. My leave came so suddenly.

“So, what do you think, Andrei?” Alexander said.

“What?”

“I said—don’t you want to add your opinion?”

“Sure. If the Germans come, we go into the forests and fight.”

Tolek Alterman’s bushy hair flopped as he thrust a finger up and said that Andrei had no restraint. Andrei didn’t care to argue today—not with Tolek or Ana or Susan or Ervin or Alexander.

“Who can make plans? Who the hell knows what’s going to happen!” Andrei said.

Alexander Brandel stepped in quickly and with his great gift for mediation averted the clash of philosophy spurred on by the gushing rivers of words. He pronounced a few well-chosen, all-conclusive benedictions about the great wisdom of Zionism in which everyone’s point of view was vindicated, and the meeting broke up on a note of unity, unity forever.

When they were all gone, Andrei remained in the home of his closest friend. He and Wolf Brandel, Alex’s sixteen year-old son, engaged in a chess match while Alex worked at his desk.

“As a cavalry officer, I shall show you how to use your horses,” Andrei said, moving his knight against Wolf’s bishop.

Young Wolf lopped the horse off. Andrei scratched his head. It was no disgrace to lose, for the boy was a chess wizard.

Alex looked over from his desk. “Wolf tells me you commit your horse to battle without proper support. You are a bad officer, Andrei.”

“Hah ... today, schmendrick, you are going to get a lesson.”

The mild and graying Brandel smiled and went back to his papers. Being general secretary of an organization with twenty thousand members and a hundred thousand sympathizers kept him busy night and day. Administrator, fund raiser, recruiter. He was overseer of the orphanage, the training farm, and the publication Kol Bathyran—Voice of Bathyran.

More than anything, Alexander Brandel was the philosopher of pure Zionism.

There were many types of Zionism, each with its own variants. Alexander Brandel said there was a different type of Zionism for every Jew.

The largest single philosophy, labor Zionism, emerged from Poland and Russia after terrible massacres of the Jews at the turn of the century. Labor Zionism called for self-sacrifice by a dedicated Jewish labor force as the key to the redemption of Palestine.

The second of the major philosophies was that of the revisionists or activists. These were angry men whose mold demanded retribution. Often super-nationalistic and military-minded, they wanted the injustices of anti-Semitism atoned by “an eye for an eye.” From the ranks of the revisionists came many of the terrorists who fought British rule in the Palestine Mandate.

Alexander Brandel’s Bathyrans, formed by a small group of intellectuals, were a third group. Their concept was Zionist purity. They believed in a single principle: the establishment of a Jewish homeland was a historic necessity, as proved by two thousand years of persecution.

While the other groups agreed that the Bathyrans indeed had idealism to spare, it was impossible to put ideology into practical use without dogma.

Brandel countered charges that the Bathyrans were an antiseptic social club by taking the best of all the ideas and putting them into practice while being bound by none of them. He did not agree with the restrictions on the individual demanded by the Labor Zionists, nor did he believe in the dedication to force of the Revisionists as a complete answer. Some force and some restrictions—yes, but not completely.

When he had quit his job as an instructor of history at the university to assume leadership of the Bathyrans, the group was struggling and floundering. From chaos he developed concepts and philosophies which brought it into respect.

He lived in abstraction in his personal life. His income was always modest, his person disorganized in a scholar’s absent-minded way. The light always burned late in the Brandel flat, for even beyond duty to the Bathyrans, Alexander Brandel was a Polish historian of note.

Wolf knocked off Andrei’s second horse when Sylvia, Alex’s wife, came in with a pot of tea and some cookies. She was six months pregnant and starting to show very much. Bathyran humor had it that Alex had come home only twice in sixteen years and both times made Sylvia pregnant.

She was the personification of the “good Jewish girl.” Plain, pretty with dark and plumpish features, she was sharp in mind and the clever homemaker who created ideal conditions which allowed Alex to pursue his work.

To Sylvia, a Zionist from birth, Alex had achieved the pinnacle of accomplishment for a Jewish man. He was a writer and teacher and historian. Nothing could be greater than that. She had attended her first Labor Zionist meeting in her mother’s arms before she could walk and she was completely dedicated to her husband’s work. She never complained that they were poor or that he was gone half the time.

In his own lackadaisical way Alex loved Sylvia very much. Almost as much as she loved him.

Alex thrived on work. Only once in a while did he seem to need the comfort of a warm bed and his woman’s arms and soothing voice. While the world revolved around him in haste and anger and frustration, he never seemed to vary his pace, never raised his voice, never panicked, never seemed torn by those inner conflicts of other men.

Alexander Brandel had achieved that state of heaven on earth which is called peace of mind.

It seemed paradoxical and almost humorous that it was the team of Brandel and Androfski that made the Bathyrans go. Andrei was fifteen years Alex’s junior and his opposite in temper and outlook. Andrei was an activist in thinking. Yet they recognized in each other a particular strength the other lacked. The symbol of strength ... the symbol of mind.

“You and Gabriela will stay for dinner,” Sylvia said.

“If you don’t go to any trouble.”

“What’s trouble? Wolf, the minute you are through with that game, you practice your flute. Money for flute lessons doesn’t grow on trees.”

“Yes, Momma.”

“Andrei, it’s a good thing your niece Rachael goes to the same conservatory. He would never practice a note.”

Andrei shot a glance at Wolf, who reddened.

So! he thought. You are one of those schmendricks looking over Rachael.

Wolf licked his lips, lowered his eyes, and made a move.

Andrei studied the boy. Gawky, a few straggling hairs on his chin, pimples ... What could Rachael possibly see in that thing? Not a man, certainly, but on the other hand not quite a boy. Known him since he was a baby. He is a good lad. He will respect Rachael ... I think.

“Your move.”

Andrei made an atrocious play.

“Checkmate,” Wolf said.

Andrei glared at the board for three full minutes. “Go practice your flute.”

He stretched and yawned and meandered over to Alex, who was writing in a large notebook.

“What’s this?” Andrei said, lifting the book and thumbing through it.

“Just a journal of events. Fulfilling my natural calling as a nosy person.”

“What do you expect to do with diaries at your age?”

“I don’t know if it has any use. Just a wild guess, Andrei, that it might have some importance someday.”

Andrei put Brandel’s journal back on the desk and shrugged. “It will never take the place of the Seventh Ulany Brigade.”

“I wouldn’t be too certain of that,” Alex said. “Truth used at the right time can be a weapon worth a thousand armies.”

“Alex, you’re a dreamer.”

Alex watched Andrei grow restless. He was really the only person with whom Andrei could speak from the inner reaches of his mind. Alex pushed his papers aside, took a bottle of vodka from his desk, and poured two glasses, a small one for himself and a large one for Andrei.

Andrei took the glass and said, “Le’chayim!—to life.”

“You were quiet at the meeting today,” Alex said.

“The rest of them did enough talking for me.”

“Andrei, I’ve seen you so unhappy only once before. Two years ago, B.G.—before Gabriela. You’ve had an argument?”

“I always have arguments with her.”

“Where is she?”

“In the church most likely, lighting candles and asking forgiveness of Jesus, Mary, the Apostles, and forty Polish saints for living in sin with a Jew.”

“It’s the coming war, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s the war and it’s Gabriela. There are things that a man wants answered before he goes out on a battlefield.”

“We talked about these things today for three hours. You weren’t with us.”

Andrei sipped his vodka and shook his head. “I am a bad Jew, Alex. I am not a Jew my father would have been proud of, may God rest his soul.”

Andrei walked to the window and pulled the curtain back and pointed to the great symbol of eastern Europe’s Jewry, the Tlomatskie Synagogue. “My father could find comfort for any problem in the words of the Torah.”

“But, Andrei, that is why we are Bathyrans and Labor Zionists and Revisionists. We could not find comfort in the Torah alone.”

“That is the point, Alex. I am not even a good Zionist.”

“My goodness, who’s been talking to you?”

“Paul Bronski. He sees right through me. I am a phony Zionist. Alex, now listen to me. I’m not a disciple of A. D. Gordon and that crap of love of the soil. I don’t want to go to Palestine, now or ever. Warsaw is my city, not Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. I am a Polish officer and this is my country.”

“You told me once very plainly that you don’t want anyone to steal your chickens. Isn’t that Zionism? Aren’t we merely in a struggle for dignity?”

“In dubious battle,” Andrei mumbled. Then he sat and his voice became very soft. “I want to live in Poland and I want to be a part of this country as though I belong. But at the same time I want to be what I am. I cannot accept Paul Bronski’s terms of giving up what I am. I have wanted to run to the synagogue and believe with my father’s faith. I want to believe in Zionism as you believe.”

Alexander Brandel tightened the muffler around his neck. He lifted his glass, revealing a big suede patch on his elbow.

“Did you ever read my article when I tried to explain the anatomy of anti-Semitism in Poland? Never mind, it was a bad article.” He closed his eyes to intensify his meditation and recited, “All of Poland is divided into three classes. The peasant class, the gentry—those who aim to keep them peasants—and the Jews. Ninety-five per cent Ukrainia and five per cent Paris with a few ethnic groups thrown in to make eternal trouble on our eastern and western borders. We Jews came to Poland at the invitation of a Polish king in the Middle Ages fleeing ahead of the holy swords of purification of the Crusades. We came to establish their merchant and professional class.”

“Well said, Professor.”

“Andrei, take that poor miserable peasant scratching out an existence on the land. He is driven to mysticism in his worship in order to justify being able to live in a world he cannot cope with. Now, he has a Jew in his village. The Jew is not allowed to own land, so the Jew makes magic with his hands. The Jew can sew, mend shoes ... The Jew can read. The Jew reads something in that mysterious script and keeps rituals that frighten the peasant. Or perhaps the Jew becomes the grain merchant. He has to use his wit and cunning to live. He may lend money—this makes him despicable. But what the peasant really does not understand is the Jew who pushes a cart and sells secondhand clothing in order to send his son through college. Now, our peasant goes out once a week to the town and he is very frustrated and confused and he gets drunk. He must hit someone, explode this accumulation of frustration. He cannot hit the nobleman who owns his land and steals half his crop as rent, so he beats up the little Jew who cannot fight back. The nobleman tells him that the Jew who lends the money and is the grain merchant and uses human blood in his rituals has brought him to this state of poverty. He is a victim of Jewish cunning. Now, our nobleman, who robs the peasants blind, does not give them education or medicine or justice, also hates the Jew who is his doctor or lawyer or architect or banker. We are the convenient scapegoat for the serfs and the ones who aim to keep them as serfs.”

Andrei grunted. “Wanting to be a Pole in your own land is as futile as wanting to be a Jew in your own land. I am not allowed the luxury of either.”

He looked out of the window and saw Gabriela walking toward the flat. At least there is another night with her before I must go back, Andrei thought. At least there is that.

Chapter Nine

THE DIVINE FEELING WHICH gripped Warsaw on Sunday was, unfortunately, not able to call a truce, to hold back those hands of fate moving toward the twelfth hour. The ministries, the war offices, and the newsrooms were open for business.

Chris turned the bureau over to Rosy and walked to the Foreign Ministry to check out any late announcements in the crisis.

For the moment it was quiet.

He left and, instead of returning to the Bristol, continued past the tall columns of the eternal flame on Pilsudski Square and on into the Saxony Gardens. The Sunday strollers and lazers filled the benches and paths. He passed the big wooden theater which announced the final production of the summer season. New show next week, Chris thought, all German cast. Chris stopped before the lake, checked his watch, and found an empty bench. The warm sun and the gliding swans added to the serenity. He closed his eyes a moment and rubbed his temple. He was queasy and had a slight headache as a result of his binge with Andrei the night before. Lucky Andrei will be going back, he thought, as one more drinking bout with the pride of the Ulanys would do him in.

Deborah appeared down the path. She looked around for him, but he did not signal. For a moment he wanted only to gaze on her. Each time he saw her it was the same as the first. She waved and sat beside him and he quietly took her hand. For a long time they did not speak, nor did they hear the swirl of foot traffic around them or the sounds of giggling from the lake where a soldier stopped rowing his boat and nearly tipped it climbing back to his girl, nor did they hear the swans flutter indignantly to get out of the boat’s way.

“I came as soon as I could get away,” Deborah said at last.

“Why wouldn’t you come to my apartment?”

Deborah merely shook her head. “Chris,” she sighed, “what we have been doing has never been right. Only now it seems even more wrong with Paul away.”

“It’s seemed so long. Just listening for you every minute.”

“You know I wanted to come,” she said. Her fingers betrayed her nervousness so badly that she withdrew her hand.

“I’m going off tomorrow,” Chris said.

She was startled.

“Just a few days. I’m going to make a round of the border.”

“I’m glad you called me.”

“Since the other night you haven’t been off my mind a minute. Deborah, we’re sitting here in the sunlight and we can think. We’ve just got to have this out with Paul.”

“No, Chris. Not with him in the army.”

“Before that it was another excuse, and before that another. I swear I’ve been hoping he won’t come back.”

“Chris!”

“I know, he’s a fine fellow.”

“I’ve thought a lot about us too, Chris. When I’m with you—it’s—I never thought it would ever come to me. But at the same time I am doing something against everything I’ve believed in. I’m not going to leave Paul.”

“Is there any feeling between you and him?”

“Not the way you mean. There never has been, you know that. There are other ways a man and woman can be something to each other.”

“Deborah, I’m not leaving you until you throw me out.”

“Then we have come to that. I can’t continue to see you and keep what little is left of my self-respect.”

His hand touched her cheek and her neck, and she closed her eyes. “Don’t, Chris, you know how I am when you touch me. Oh, Chris, all I do is give you problems. I’m no good for you.”

She felt his lips touching her face. “Come on up to my place,” he whispered. “I’ll undress you and we’ll lie in bed and listen to music and open a bottle of champagne ...”

“Chris ... get up and walk away ... please.”

“I will if you really want me to.”

“You know I don’t.”

The afternoon was filled with a hundred kisses and endearments and a hundred more. Their love-making carried with it an intense sort of desperation, and when they had exhausted each other they fell into deep, glorious naps. When they awoke, Deborah was happy. She bathed and roamed around the kitchen, all but lost in Chris’s big terrycloth robe, and fixed the steaks and iced the champagne while he soaked in a steaming tub.

“Wash my back!” she heard him call.

When she came into the bathroom, his feet were up on the edge of the tub and he was singing a Verdi aria, trying for a high C, which he missed by a full six notes. Deborah whimpered sensuously as she knelt beside the tub and rubbed the soap over his back. He tried to open her robe.

“No peeking,” she said.

She grabbed his hair and dunked him, then covered his wet face with kisses.

Toward evening it grew chilly and he lit a fire. They finished their meal and lay contentedly on the big sofa, sipping warming cognac. Deborah opened the robe and closed it over the two of them, and his hand traced the lines of her body from her shoulders to her knees.

“Would you believe that I was such a terrible prude and such a good girl? What have you done to me, Mr. de Monti?”

Deborah Androfski was only eleven when her mother died. She had to assume the role of homemaker for her father and little brother, Andrei. Before and after school, her job never ended. She had to cook and clean and do laundry and shop. They were poor as only a Polish Jew could be. She had to spend hours bargaining and haggling in the filth and poverty of Parysowski Place to save every zloty.

It seemed that all Deborah could remember of her mother after a time was an image of a tired and pain-filled woman waiting for the redemption of death to take her away from the smells and the dirt of Stawki Street. Momma always held her back and groaned as she climbed the stairs.

Momma always had a new ache in a never-ending assortment of them.

Israel Androfski was able to find respite from the struggle of existence in the comforts of a deep-rooted Jewishness which bordered on fanatic joys through prayer. He could detach himself from the misery around him at synagogue. This was denied Momma, for everyday prayer was a privilege of men.

Being a “good Jewish wife” imposed rigid rules of life. As Deborah grew older, all the little vignettes and mosaics began to take form and meaning. Why Momma always complained especially on the Sabbath eve when Poppa came home from synagogue, for a good Jewish wife was supposed to reconsummuate the marriage every Friday night. And this was painful and unpleasant for Momma. Momma lost three children by miscarriage; one other died from disease when a year old. This came from what Momma and Poppa did on the Sabbath eve, and it always ended up in pain and suffering.

When Andrei was born, this brought on a new set of ills to Momma’s insides.

“Be careful of the boys,” Momma told Deborah. “They will make you pregnant and you’ll spend your life scrubbing floors and washing and over an oven and giving them babies. Boys are no good, Deborah—boys are no good.” Momma went to her grave decrying the suffering connected with being a woman.

Momma’s prophecies were borne out when Deborah had to scrub and clean and cook and wash and shop. It was like a voice from the grave always on her shoulder.

By the time she had reached fifteen, her father had worked his way out of the slums and moved the family to the nice Sliska Street neighborhood where Orthodox Jews of means resided.

Although Israel Androfski was a rather kindly man, in the back of her mind Deborah always blamed him for her mother’s death. And when she came of an age to understand why her father visited certain women with bad reputations, it further proved, in her mind, the sordidness of what men and women did in bed. Family responsibility had imposed upon her a passive nature. She was always lonely, as long as she could remember, except for Andrei. Her one solace was the piano.

When the burden of being a homemaker lifted after they moved to Sliska Street, Deborah threw all the latent hurts into it, bringing about an artistry that moved her close to dizzying heights of mastery.

Then, as suddenly as she had plunged into it, she rebelled against it when her father demanded she spend more and more time in its study.

A strange and unexplainable phenomenon stirred within her which overpowered the fears of night. A desire for freedom. She wanted to explore that strange world beyond. An instinct of survival let her know she was drowning in a mental ghetto.

In her first act of defiance Deborah quit the piano and demanded to go to the university to study medicine. Her first look at the outside world gave her her first true friend, Susan Geller, a nursing student.

Deborah Androfski was eighteen years old when she met Dr. Paul Bronski, the brilliant young professor for whom every female student in the university carried a secret torch. Deborah was an uncommonly beautiful girl, and as uncommonly naive as she was beautiful.

Paul Bronski, who had been rather meticulous in every move he made in his life, wanted her for his wife. She had every quality—intelligence and beauty—and would be the perfect mother and hostess. She could supply the needs of a man when he desired, and she would be good for his career.

Deborah stepped into the big wide world too fast. She was completely without sophistication or experience in that game of boys and girls. She was swept off her feet. With shattering accuracy, Momma’s dire prediction came true. She was pregnant.

“I love you very much,” Paul said. “I want you to become Mrs. Paul Bronski.”

“I think I would die if you didn’t want me.”

“Not want you? Deborah ... dear ... only—now, we must do something about your pregnancy.”

“What—”

“I know this will be difficult for you, but our future depends on it. We are going to have to give you an abortion.”

“Paul ... take our baby ...”

“Dear, you’re eighteen years old. You are one of my students. Think of what kind of scandal there will be if you are married in your condition. Not only the shame for you and your family, it would ruin my career.”

“But ... an abortion ...”

“It will be done carefully—and don’t worry. We will have children, lots of them.”

The result mired her deep in guilt. Momma was right. Sex was ugly and painful. Her deep religious roots made her bear losing the child as a penance for her sin. She married Paul Bronski and became to him all the things he wished. She was the perfect mother and the clever hostess and she filled his needs as a man.

But it was in darkness in their bed that she served her sentence. The guilt of the sex act was deeply embedded, and she practiced the discipline of pretending to enjoy in order not to offend her husband. She experienced neither fulfillment nor the smaller pleasures of love-making. She was entirely frigid.

What strange and wonderful thing was it that drew her to Christopher de Monti? He took her hand as though she were a little girl and led her through the black evil forest to the golden castle that sat on a cloud.

There was that first frightening time they were alone in his apartment and everything between them that had gone before had led to the moment when a man and a woman have nowhere left to go in their relationship but to bed.

She threw an angry tantrum over a seeming trifle. Chris completely understood that she was in reality angry with herself over her fear of an inability to perform.

So many times Chris held her face in his hands.

“Deborah, my love ... your mother is dead. You are not going to disobey her by letting yourself have the pleasure of a normal woman.”

And all the years of frustration burst out when Chris unlocked them and drove them from her.

“I didn’t know ... I didn’t know it could be like this.”

Deborah blinked her eyes open. The fire was in embers. Chris was rattling around in the kitchen. She looked at her watch. It was very late. He came in, rumpled and smiling, wearing a battered old pair of khaki trousers and holding two cups of coffee.

As wild and wonderful a woman as she had been, Chris watched her change into someone else before his eyes. She fumbled for the telephone and dialed in a nervous, jerky manner. “Hello, Rachael. This is Momma. Darling, I’m sorry I didn’t call you. I got held up. Did Zoshia make you a good dinner? Practice your piano, darling. Tell Stephan I’ll be home in a little while.”

She set the phone down slowly. Chris offered her coffee. She shook her head, avoiding his eyes, and walked away quickly toward her clothing.

“Do we have to play out another remorse-filled scene?”

“Don’t.”

“But I do—”

“I woke up just now with a terrible start. It is terribly clear that we have done something sinful in the way we have lived. I know we are going to be punished—”

The phone rang.

“It’s me, Rosy.”

“Yes, Rosy.”

“You’d better get down here, right away.”

“What’s up?”

“Everything out of Berlin has stopped cold. I called Switzerland. They say all the lines from Germany have been cut at the Polish border.”

Chapter Ten

August 31, 1939

TO: COMMANDER, COMPANY A, Reinforced

From: Commander, 7th Ulany Mounted Brigade—Grudziadz

Subject: Patrol Assignment

Proceed north on the Tczew road at 0700. A special detachment of intelligence scouts has been detailed to your command for the purpose of detecting unusual movements, changes of disposition, or additions of strength to the German Third Army.

Send reports to us by rider in a routine manner.

When you reach Tczew, join your battalion and continue with them to Gdynia.

No later than 0600 tomorrow you will encounter Company B coming from Tczew in a patrol which will be the reverse of yours. Send your dispatch with them.

It is emphasized that we are at peace with Germany and an unprovoked incident could have serious repercussions. However, under extraordinary circumstances you are authorized to use your judgment.

Signed: Zygmunt Bozakolski, Brigadier in Command, 7th Ulany Mounted Brigade—Grudziadz.

Captain Andrei Androfski moved Company A out of the large headquarters base at Grudziadz at 0700. It was scheduled as a routine patrol that called for a two-day ride along the eastern border of the Polish Corridor, along a road that ran parallel to German East Prussia. He was to meet another company of his battalion the following morning. For several weeks his brigade had been engaged in these roving patrols covering the area from the Baltic port city of Gdynia to the Grudziadz base. The patrols had been singularly dull and uneventful.

The late-summer day in Pomerania was warmish, and as Company A galloped north they were completely detached from the frantic business taking place in Berlin several hundred kilometers away. The land was green and quiet and, as soldiers do, they looked forward to a blowout in Gdynia.

Berlin, Germany: August 31, 1939

Sir Nevile Henderson, the British Foreign Minister, asked for and received a list of demands from the German Chancellery upon which war could be averted. The demands were read to him in a quick unintelligible language. He then demanded to see them in writing. They did not come.

The Germans, instead, demanded direct negotiations with the Polish peace mission upon terms the Poles did not know.

The Polish mission was not authorized to take on a direct negotiation. In last-ditch desperation Sir Nevile Henderson pleaded with the Poles to get authorization from Warsaw. The Poles attempted to comply, but when they tried to telephone their capital they discovered the phone lines had been cut.

Sir Nevile Henderson, raw-nerved from the tension and lack of sleep, angrily demanded to know why the lines were down. The Germans answered that it was the work of Polish bandits, furthering the already “intolerable” situation and “proving the Poles wanted war.”

Berlin was white-hot with war fever. The population was barraged with tales of Polish attacks along the border, of Polish aircraft firing on German commercial planes flying over the corridor, of Poles committing murder and atrocities against “innocent German ethnic families,” of Polish mobilization, and of Polish war hysteria.

By the evening of August 31, Captain Androfski’s company had made an uneventful ride along the Polish-Prussian border. They came to a halt for the day opposite the German town of Marienwerder, setting up a bivouac in a small woods a few hundred meters from the road. After the evening meal, it turned dark. Normal security was established, then Captain Androfski called together the special detachment of intelligence scouts who had been assigned to him.

In addition to the routine patrol orders, Andrei had also received verbal orders from the brigade intelligence commander concerning the German massing of armor along the corridor in that area, and Andrei’s patrol carried the secondary purpose of scouting it. The special detachment of ten men, dressed as civilians, crossed unarmed into Germany with instructions to circle the Marienwerder area during the night and return to camp before dawn. Their observations would be assessed and the data given to Company B.

August 31, 1939

TOP SECRET

To: Commander, Armed Forces

Directive #1

... inasmuch as we can find no peaceful means to solve the intolerable situation on the Eastern Frontier ... the attack on Poland is to be carried out in preparations made in CASE WHITE.

Date of attack: September 1, 1939

Time of attack: 0445

Signed: Adolf Hitler

While the men of Company A slept in a wooded area in the Polish Corridor, the epilogue to peace was written hundreds of kilometers to the south, where Germany and Poland faced each other at Gleiwitz and Katowice.

German SS troops, dressed as Polish soldiers, crossed the frontier into Poland, then recrossed into Germany and blew up their own German radio station at Gleiwitz. Therefore, in Nazi logic, a reason had been created to stamp the war as “official.”

When First Sergeant Styka shook the men of Company A out of their sleep, they were unaware of CASE WHITE. To them it was to be another boring day of soldiering. They grumbled into wakefulness, cursing as they moved about.

There had been only snatches of sleep for Captain Androfski and First Sergeant Styka. They waited out most of the night until the ten scouts had returned safely. Andrei sifted their information and wrote this dispatch.

September 1, 1939

To: Commander, 7th Ulany Mounted Brigade—Grudziadz

From: Company A, mobile border patrol

Last night we encamped at position L-14 opposite Marienwerder. The area was scouted by the special detachment in accordance with verbal orders.

Abnormal German strength is evident in this area. In addition to units we have previously identified, we have identified two new regiments of armored infantry and at least a portion of a division of Panzer tanks (22nd and 56th Infantry and 3rd Panzer Tanks).

Two battalions of this Panzer tank division moved out of Marienwerder this morning at 0300, apparently for disposition in a southerly direction.

Company A will continue north today. We expect to join the balance of the battalion at Tczew tonight.

Signed: Andrei Androfski, Captain, Company A

Andrei folded the dispatch, then opened it on a sudden impulse. Across the bottom of the paper he scrawled the words, “Long live Poland!”

First Sergeant Styka trotted his mount to Andrei and snapped a salute. “The company is eating, sir. We should be ready to move out in a half hour.”

“Any sign of Company B yet?”

“No, sir. No sign of them.”

Andrei looked at his watch and wondered. It was half past five. The deadline was 0600. A half hour to go. Trouble up north? Well, no use speculating about it.

“Morning, sir,” the officers said as he moved into their circle.

“Morning.”

He and Styka sat off to one side and ate. Goddamned ham. My father would roll over in his grave if he could see me eat ham.

“Styka, when the hell are you going to learn to brew tea?” He flipped the contents in the bottom of the cup to the ground.

“I’m afraid never, sir.”

“Have the company saddle up and stand by.”

“Yes, sir.”

Andrei walked to the edge of the woods and stared long and futilely up the empty road, straining to see a telltale whiff of dust or hear the welcome sound of hoofbeats.

0600, the maximum hour, passed. No Company B.

Suddenly the entire movement of the company stopped, and all the men were staring up the road. Andrei walked back to the bivouac area. “Styka!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Send me a rider. Make it Tyrowicz.”

Company A’s best rider, Corporal Tyrowicz, reported.

“Tyrowicz, ride hard back to Grudziadz. I want you back there by noon. Use fields—stay off the main road. Can you do it, lad?”

“I’ll try hard, Captain.”

“Hand-deliver this dispatch to Brigadier Bozakolski. Tell him that Company B did not show up. We are proceeding north.”

“Yes, sir.”

He watched Tyrowicz spur out, driving his horse. He wheeled to Styka. “Move the advance scouts out. First platoon take the point. Use flank guards. Be on the road in five minutes, column of twos. Shake it up.”

“Yes, sir.”

It was chilly in the dawnlight. The men beat warmth into themselves, and darts of frosted air spurted from their mouths. The first rays of light penetrated the woods, changing the world from ugly gray. Up and down, the crisp orders to mount up. There was no cursing or griping. A sobering tension filled them all. Some of the more pious were on their knees saying quick Hail Marys. Strange, Andrei thought, this isn’t much of a praying company. He looked at his watch again. It would be fully light in another forty minutes. Where the hell was Company B! Where the hell were they!

Andrei’s stomach knotted in much the same way as it did before a soccer match. Was this quiet morning and Styka’s bad tea war?

The first sergeant returned. “We are formed up, sir.”

Andrei nodded and watched the sergeant trot off out to the road.

The woods was empty now. Andrei checked the saddle buckles on Batory. He chewed a piece of black bread, sipped from the canteen, and slipped it back into the saddlebag. He looked up at his magnificent black beast. The horse was nervous.

Andrei pressed his forehead against Batory’s neck. “We render thanks unto Thee for our lives, which are in Thy hands, and for our souls, which are ever in Thy keeping.”

Why did I pray? I have not prayed since I was a boy. Batory whinnied and went up on his hind legs. “You feel it too, don’t you, boy? Steady, fellow.” Andrei swung astride his horse and soon had him calm and trotted out to the road.

“Move out!” Styka barked.

The forward platoon galloped off. The flanks fanned out, and the communicators positioned to keep contact. They advanced in a slow trot, transfixed by the brightening day. North for an hour, then two, three, and each kilometer filled them with greater uneasiness. There was no sign of Company B. It was beyond normal limitations. Either they had had their orders changed or ... trouble.

Styka heard it first. The column stopped without a command. Everyone’s eyes went upward. There was a distant hum in the sky. Then black specks appeared high, high overhead, almost beyond sight.

“Off the road,” Andrei ordered quietly.

They went into the ditch on the Polish side of the border road, dismounted, and held their restless horses still. Two hundred pairs of eyes fixed on the sky.

“... sixty. Sixty-one, sixty-two ...”

The humming overhead grew louder and louder. And soon the sky was pocked with masses of black spots moving in perfect formation in what appeared to be slow motion.

The only sound in the stunned company was Styka’s voice continuing a toll in monotone. “... two hundred thirty-four, two hundred thirty-five ...”

They had never seen such a mass of planes. The awesome display passed and disappeared from sight and sound. Three hundred fifty airplanes. For a very long time no one uttered a sound.

“Captain,” Styka said in a cracked voice, “aren’t they flying over our territory?”

“East-southeast,” Andrei answered.

“Where would the captain say they are heading?”

“Warsaw.”

The eyes of every man went from the sky to Captain Androfski. “Well, gentlemen,” he said, “the store is open for business.” Nervous laughter greeted him. “Styka, bring my officers in and get Private Trzaska from the First Platoon.”

They huddled around the map. Trzaska,” Andrei said, “you were a fanner near Starogard, weren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where can we find good cover and an elevation overlooking the road?”

Private Trzaska studied the map a moment, then slid a dirty fingernail up the border road and stopped. There’s a small forest here, sir. Runs several hundred meters in all directions and sits on a knoll.”

“How far from the road?”

“Oh ... maybe three hundred meters.”

They could make it an hour of good riding. It was the nearest point with decent cover. This is where we’re going, gentlemen,” Andrei said. “Have your men combat-ready, and move single file and stretched out. Quick trot all the way. Second Platoon, take the rear guard and drop your last man a kilometer back. Let’s move.”

“Mount up!”

“Combat-ready. Load them up.”

“Single file. Don’t bunch up like a flock of pigeons.”

The scouts moved out at a gallop.

This time Captain Androfski was first on the road. He put on his steel helmet, buckled the chin strap, cocked his pistol, and swung Batory up ahead of the company.

Styka’s large mustache drooped.

“How you doing, Sergeant?” Andrei asked.

“I’m so scared I could crap my pants,” Styka answered.

“Stay close to me. Well get through today. They say after the first one it’s not so bad.”

Styka faced the company. “Ride hard!”

Company A moved north again and within an hour found the woods which Private Trzaska had promised. Andrei was pleased. He had cover and an excellent view of the road.

He ordered each of four men to ride out a kilometer indifferent directions and observe. They were issued flares for warning. Then he sent one rider north to continue to look for Company B and a second rider south back to the Grudziadz base.

By midafternoon a second flight of planes, as large as the first flight in the morning, again blackened the skies, heading toward central Poland.

Andrei sat away from his men, trying to evaluate his situation and its implications. The new German Panzer power they had discovered, the seven hundred airplanes, and the lost Company B—all indicated war had started.

What move?

To continue to Tczew and join the battalion even though there appeared to be trouble up north?

To stand pat and wait for the sign of Germans?

What if the Germans showed up? He had good cover. Should he button up and wait for dark and head back to the main base?

No, impossible. The nature and breeding of the Ulany made the idea of both running and hiding repulsive. He smiled to himself as he thought of Chris. Too bad he won’t be the first into Berlin. No doubt we are massing for a huge counterattack into Germany now.

As often happens in war when men are in the field, the decision is made for them.

“Captain,” Styka said, “riders coming in from the north!”

Andrei trained his field glasses on them. There were two. One was his, the rider he had dispatched earlier. Another, a stranger. They pulled into the forest with frothing mounts. The stranger was bloody and half senseless.

“Back up, dammit,” Andrei said. “Give the man breathing room.”

“He’s from Company B, sir,” Andrei’s man said.

“Can you talk, soldier?”

He nodded and gasped. “Holy Mother ... oh, holy Mother, Captain.” Andrei pumped some water down his throat. “Oh, Jesus. We never knew what happened. The Germans ... heading south ... right down the road.”

“Take this man and keep him calm. Lieutenant Vacek, plant your contact mine on the road. Lieutenant Zurawski, set up all four machine guns in a U-shaped cross fire around the mine. Use the ditches on both sides of the road for cover. Dzienciala, can we use our mortars effectively from this distance?”

“I think so, sir.”

“Keep your squad in the woods here as a covering force. The rest of you line out for a single-file charge. I’ll lead. If our luck goes right, we can ambush the first batch of them. I want only limited pursuit. Pull back here to the forest for regrouping.”

“If we don’t pursue, they’ll know where we are, Captain.”

“Hell, they’ll know in Berlin where we are ten minutes after the first shot.”

“What does the captain plan to do after we regroup?”

“Sit our asses right here and keep them from getting south on this road. As soon as it turns dark we’ll go north to find the battalion.”

The single land mine was planted on the road and a crossfire of machine guns established within minutes. The two mortar squads set up in the forest and zeroed in on the road. The rest of Company A stretched nearly the length of the woods ... and they waited.

A warning flare arched up from the northern advance guard.

“Here they come, Captain.”

Out of the north there arose a billow of dust. Andrei lifted his field glasses and watched the cloud of dust grow larger until it could be seen by everyone. And then, the sound of motors. He counted them as they turned a bend into the straight flat stretch of a kilometer and a half directly below him.

“Troop carriers, twenty-two of them. Must have two companies.”

And then he could see the swastika markings on their sides. The trucks rambled down the road in an undeterred race. Andrei reasoned that the Germans must have felt there would be no opposition after they had overrun the battalion and Company B.

“Steady the line, dammit!”

He held the glasses to his eyes. He could see the face of his enemy! In the lead truck the driver looked to be a boy. For some crazy reason he thought of Wolf Brandel at that second, and Batory went up on his hind legs.

“Stand by!”

The lead truck was armored. It struck the mine, and the earth shook and splattered and the truck disintegrated. The second truck, filled with soldiers, attempted to stop short and it careened off the road, rolling into the ditch, bursting into flame. The third and fourth trucks slammed into each other. And then! Rat-a-tat! Rat-a-tat! Streaks of tracers leaped from the machine guns, catching the Germans in a deadly cross fire. German soldiers poured out of the trucks in wild disarray, trying to organize under the frantic shouts of their officers.

Andrei brought his hand down. “Charge! Charge! Kill the sons of bitches! Charge!”

A bloodcurdling battle cry erupted from Company A as they poured down the knoll behind their captain. The horsemen tore into the confused enemy, ripping, hacking, trampling them into a gory massacre.

Unable to organize, the Germans began fleeing on foot, to be run down, shot down, smashed down.

The tail end of the convoy, the last five trucks, were able to turn around and flee back north. The mortars in the woods found one truck, turning it into a torch. The other four escaped.

It was over in ten minutes. A hundred dead and dying Germans lay strewn about the road and the ditches, and the air hot with the burning of the shattered vehicles. Andrei pulled his men back into the forest.

He climbed from Batory and fell to his knees and doubled over to catch his breath. There were howls of the delight of victory among his dripping wet, exhausted men. The first smell of combat had been victory.

Andrei climbed to his feet and leaned against his horse, who was wet with sweat too but excited over the stimulation of carrying his master to a kill.

“Styka, we’re not going to throw a victory ball. Calm them down, we’ve work to do. Medic, what were our casualties?”

“Four dead, sir. Trzaska, Lieutenant Zurawski—I think he got it from our own cross fire—and Wajwod and Lamejko.”

“Wounded?”

“Six—one bad.”

“Horses?”

“Ten, Captain,” Styka said. “All have been executed.”

Andrei looked at the wreckage on the road. Nothing could pass. The Germans could not detour, for the ditches were too steep.

“Any orders, Captain?”

“Get the machine gunners back here. No use having them exposed. Just stand by—they’ll be back. Let me take a look at the wounded.”

The victory had done much to pass the first terrible fear of contact. They waited.

Andrei stood at the farthest edge of the forest, holding Batory’s reins. “Well, boy, we’re in it now,” he said to his horse. “That wasn’t so bad after all the times we’ve practiced it, was it? Too damned easy, if you ask me. Wish we had an alternative to this position. ... Well, we’re committed now. Have to hold them off this road. Think we can keep this position? Sure we can. They’ll never get another attack organized today. Easy, boy.”

Blam!

An explosion went off at the foot of the knoll, very close to the road, and another and another.

“Styka!”

It was long-range cannon fire. Where? A half dozen more shells exploded, walking up the knoll. Andrei looked at his watch. Only forty-eight minutes since he had regrouped for the attack.

Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam!

“Over there,” Andrei said. He pointed in the direction of East Prussia. A dozen iron-treaded monsters were crossing the field, their cannons probing the forest. Andrei grunted. Radio communication and long-range guns had turned a good defensive position into a trap within minutes. Was he going to pay with interest for his ambush? He looked at his pair of puny mortars. They would be unable to reach the tanks until they were fairly near the road. The Germans could lay back out of range and blast them to pieces if they chose. Break for it, maybe? No, dammit never!

The cannon fire began to find the edge of the woods. The line of horsemen began to waver. “Steady there!”

Two of the tanks reached the road.

“Mortar fire!”

The mortar shells bounced around the tanks. One scored a direct hit. They did nothing to deter the German barrage.

Good God! Andrei thought. How can I stop them?

... four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten-eleven-twelve. All the tanks were in position now, hitting them from three hundred meters.

“Dismount! Take your horses back and hitch them! Form a staggered firing line.”

Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam!

Barks of thin trees burst into flame. A dozen horses cried in terror and several broke from the woods. Company A hid behind the cover of the trees. Only Captain Androfski and Batory stayed forward to observe.

The German tanks groaned into motion toward the bottom of the knoll. “Machine gunners! Give it to them. Shoot for the turrets!”

The machine guns hit into the tanks, and their bullets bounced off like annoying little ant pricks.

“Captain! Airplanes!”

The black vultures streaked over the treetops and screamed down on the woods. The planes flew low, dropping fire bombs, and the woods went up like a torch. A second flight of planes vomited ten thousand machine-gun bullets into them. The instant they passed, the tanks started again. Now truckloads of infantry unloaded, forming up behind the tanks.

“To your horses!”

Gagging and choking and bleeding, what was left of Company A found what was left of their mounts.

“Charge!” Andrei screamed. Batory, his black mane flying in defiance, led the broken and pathetic line of Ulanys down the knoll and into the German tanks. Andrei’s terrible anger could see only the infantry men behind the tanks. I’ll get them! I’ll get the bastards!

His men were blasted from their saddles before they had gone fifty meters. Andrei whipped around and dragged them to their feet and pulled them on their horses and tried to reorganize the attack. There was nothing left. It was a rout. They went back into the forest, with their captain after them, cursing them to make one more try.

Now the tanks inched forward up the knoll, German infantrymen crouched low behind their iron cover. The line of steel came within a hundred meters—point-blank—and let go again, and the infantry fanned out between the tanks.

In the woods there was the smell of burning flesh and burning wood and the sounds of screaming men and screaming horses. All was havoc. For ten, fifteen, twenty minutes Andrei was able to rally his men to hold the German infantry. He kicked them to their feet and tried to set them on their horses again, but they were bombed from the saddles and gunned and burned with methodical indifference.

And then he staggered around blindly as a cloud of smoke hit him in the face, and he cried for Batory and felt his horse and struggled into the saddle. “Come on, boy! Let’s get them!”

He spurred the animal toward the Germans, then he whirled about and the world began to spin, and when he opened his eyes he felt as though his chest were being crushed and all he could see was the blue sky above him and the tops of the burning trees whirling and whirling. Andrei thrashed about on his hands and knees, semi-conscious, crawling to Batory. “Batory! Get up! Get up, boy! Don’t lay there! Get up! Let’s kill them!”

First Sergeant Styka knelt over Andrei and shook him violently. “Captain, we are finished! Get up, sir! I have two horses. We must make a run for it, sir!”

Andrei lifted the dead horse’s head in his hands. “Batory! Get up!”

“Sir, your horse is dead! Nearly all the men are dead!”

The big soldier dragged Andrei to his feet. Andrei broke loose from his grip and kicked his lifeless animal. “Get up, God damn you! Get up! Get up! Get up!”

Chapter Eleven

HUMANITY HAD BEEN ENDOWED by the German people with their Beethovens and Schillers and their Freuds and the dubious gifts of a Karl Marx. Now the German people presented humanity with a new set of authors—General von Bock, General von Küchler, General von Kluge, General von Rundstedt, General von Blaskowitz, General List, General Haider, General von Brauchitsch. General von Reichenau. The book they wrote presenting mankind with a new innovation of German culture was called Blitzkrieg, lightning war.

Poland formed a huge bulge which fitted into the open jaws of Germany, with Prussia on the north, a common border of many hundred kilometers from the Baltic to Krakow, and in the south newly raped Czechoslovakia beyond the Carpathian Mountains.

The jaws bit down, and saber teeth in the form of armored columns tore deeply into the flesh of Poland. The Poles, arrogant and stubborn and filled with foolhardy national pride and an offensive-minded Polish Staff, doomed whatever small chance there may have been for some sort of stand.

Forgoing logic, Poland did not fall back on her few natural defensive river barriers. Instead, she dreamed in vain of holding a fifteen-hundred-mile border whereon the enemy chose his points of attack. She had further vision of making a counterattack in the form of a hell-bent-for-leather cavalry charge.

Poland’s forces were all but immobile, armorless and antiquated, her arsenal better suited to war five decades earlier. Sustained by raw courage, Poland asked the horse to fight the tank.

German land forces ran double and triple envelopments, executed picture-book tactics; massacred, trapped, overwhelmed, sliced, overpowered the near-defenseless but proud enemy. The new book called for the disregard of even the token humanities customarily observed in the organized art of murder known as war.

Death spewed from the skies.

Within hours of the German border violations, the Polish air force, tiny and outdated, was shot to pieces on the ground. Within hours, rail lines were ripped up and supply dumps smoked skyward and hot bridges sizzled as they buckled into rivers. Cities and villages without so much as a gun to fire were leveled into smoldering rubble heaps.