Mila 18 - Leon Uris [110]
He paced the floor, then spurred into one of his more frequent tantrums. “Dammit! There are nearly six hundred thousand people in this ghetto! I have to find place for four thousand new families by the end of the week! There is no space! People are sleeping in courtyards, alleyways, basements, attics, warehouses, hallways.”
“I don’t see what one has to do with the other.”
“Everything has to do with everything! I’m sick and tired of being chastised by my own wife for trying to protect my family. Isn’t it enough that I let Stephan keep on with this whim of yours to study with Rabbi Solomon? He barely escaped with his life once. Do you know one of those children caught was shot? It could have been your own son. I am still the head of this family, and that girl is not going to Wework.”
She nodded and turned and picked up the brush again and stroked her hair. More and more she saw him going down. So long as Mrs. Bronski, wife of the JCA deputy chairman, works in an orphanage and so long as his daughter plays in morale-building concerts and the status is not besmirched, that was all that really mattered. The words never left her lips. She wanted to cry that there had to be an end to the price he was willing to pay for his skin—but she merely stroked her hair and said, “Yes, Paul.”
Chapter Twenty
Journal Entry
WOLF WANTS TO COME home. I don’t know why. I thought he would be happy on the farm. Tolek says he is one of the best people out there. What could it be?
The brief marriage of convenience between Germany and the Soviet Union has been abruptly annulled. Russia was attacked last week (June 21, 1941). This year’s casualties have been Greece, Yugoslavia, Crete, and North Africa. Rumania and Bulgaria have declared war against the allies. (What allies?) The news reports that Britain is getting a fearful bombing by the Luftwaffe. London is catching it even worse than Warsaw did. Hard to believe.
The prospects of four to six million Jews in the Soviet Union in the path of Germany’s unchecked onslaught is a terrifying prospect.
ALEXANDER BRANDEL
Old Rabbi Solomon entered the headquarters of the Big Seven on the corner of Pawia and Lubeckiego streets opposite the prison. Many of the sleazy characters around the anteroom were accomplished rabbi baiters. They stared at the old man. He carried a holy dignity in his stature, almost as though he had a mystic power to invoke God’s wrath.
“Announce me to Max Kleperman,” he ordered sternly.
“Ah, my rabbi,” beamed Max. “My own holy rabbi,” he cooed to the personal guardian of his soul. Max rushed from behind his desk and pulled the old man in by the elbow, shoved him into a chair, and raced to the door and shouted, “I am with my rabbi. I am not to be disturbed for anyone. Not for a fire—not even for Dr. Franz Koenig!”
He winked to relay his fearlessness. Rabbi Solomon let him play out the role. “What can I get you? Maybe a chocolate. Hershey’s from America—or coffee, Swiss Nestlé’s, personal stock.”
“Nothing at all.”
“You have received my food packages?”
Solomon nodded. Large bundles arrived each week with butter, cheeses, eggs, bread, fruits, vegetables, meats, candies. They were promptly turned over to the Orphans and Self-Help Society.
The rabbi said he wouldn’t mind if Max smoked in his presence, so Max went through the ritual of nipping the end of a cigar, coddling it, squeezing it, lighting it, puffing it, admiring its taste, pointing it. “Confidentially, I wanted to speak to you, Rabbi. You have been forgetful. This business of teaching Talmud Torah after you were caught twice, and then that Passover seder you conducted in prison yet. Your last trip to Pawiak Prison cost me sixty thousand zlotys in gifts to the German Winter Relief. They take winter relief in the middle of the summer, those goniffs.”
The old man did not dignify Max with an answer. It seemed as though lightning shot out from his eyes, and his white beard fairly bristled in anger.
“Rabbi, can’t you take a joke? You know Max