Highlander - Donna Lettow [60]
Avram carried a burlap sack with him, which he set down near the crate on which MacLeod sat. “Cohen checked her over. Good news is, no internal injury, no internal bleeding that he can detect. She should be fine. Bad news is, the Germans are still dropping by around four in the morning.” He sat down heavily on the blanket with a sigh. “I hate uninvited guests.”
“I guess it was inevitable. Doesn’t make it any easier, though.” As MacLeod spoke, Avram untied the sack and opened it. “I’d had this—I don’t know what you’d call it—hope? Dream? That the Germans would keep putting it off until the Russians, or maybe the Americans, could get here.”
“You don’t honestly believe it would be better with the Russians, do you? You said you’d once ridden with Cossacks. Then you know the Russians feel the same as the Germans.”
“I know you’re right.”
“As for your heroic Allies,” Avram went on, “it’s obvious by now they just don’t care. Shimon Mendelsohn told them. A dozen others, all with the same message. Jan Karski talked to your Roosevelt and your Churchill personally. Zygelbojm went on the BBC from London and told the whole world what was happening here, in Lodz, in Lublin.” He began to pull out a few small items from the sack, placing them on the blanket as he spoke. There was no anger in his voice, merely acceptance. He could as easily have been discussing the price of fish at the market. Avram Mordecai rarely wore his anger publicly. “So where are the bombing raids, he asks? Why hasn’t anyone blown Auschwitz to hell? Why haven’t the great war powers of the West even tried to destroy Treblinka? I tried, MacLeod. Me. I’m just one man, but I had to try, even though I failed. Why haven’t they? Why? You know why, MacLeod. Because we don’t matter. Because to them, the lives of half a million Jews, a million Jews, God only knows maybe ten million Jews, just don’t matter.”
Avram pulled a dusty bottle of wine and three metal cups from his sack. “We have to face it, MacLeod. The cavalry’s not riding to the rescue. We’re one in here. All we can do is circle the wagons and try to hang on.” He set the cups up carefully on the blanket.
“What are you doing?” MacLeod asked.
Avram pulled out a penknife and set about opening the wine. “This is probably the last bottle of kosher wine left in Warsaw. I’ve been saving it for Pesach since I found it nearly a year ago.”
Although the Jewish calendar had been unfamiliar to MacLeod when he first came to Warsaw, he’d caught on quickly. “Passover starts tomorrow night, not tonight. You’re a day early.”
“By sundown tomorrow, I don’t think anyone’s going to be doing any celebrating. If God wants to damn me for starting a day early, then so be it. It would be a shame to waste this—it won’t go well with Wiener schnitzel.”
The bottle open, Avram set it aside and picked up an old tin can. It was open, and in the bottom was a makeshift wick and a thick layer of wax once melted from burning candles. Actual candles were in short supply, and what few were left were desperately needed to light the malinas, the bunkers where the majority of Warsaw’s inhabitants would soon be hiding. He offered the can to MacLeod. “Got a light?” As MacLeod pulled out his well-used Zippo and lit the wick, Avram closed his eyes and began to sing in a clear, high tenor.
Boruch Ator Adonoi, Elohainu Melech hor-olum, asher kid’shornu b’mitzvo-sav v’tziornu, l’hadlik nair shel yom tov.
“That was nice,” MacLeod said when Avram opened his eyes again.
“A little blessing for the light, such as it is.” He took the makeshift candle and set it down so that what little light it threw could not be seen beyond the Wall. Then he began to unwrap the smaller parcels he’d taken from his sack. “I’m afraid it’s not much,” he said, setting out a few pieces of unleavened bread and two hard-boiled eggs. “I gave most