Mila 18 - Leon Uris [118]
Wolf’s mouth hung open in awe. There were four people present, all former Bathyrans who lived at Mila 19. Adam Blumenfeld was at a radio receiver with earphones on. “Hello, Welvel,” he greeted the boy by his nickname.
Pinchas Silver worked at a box of hand-set print. Beside the small press were copies of the underground paper, Liberty. Pinchas smiled and welcomed Wolf in. A forgery table and camera were in one corner.
The Farber sisters, Mira and Minna, were there, studying to become runners.
“Any news?”
Adam Blumenfeld took one earphone off. “I’ve got BBC. Something about American destroyers being loaned to England.”
“How about the Home Army?” Andrei asked in reference to the quickly growing Polish underground force.
“They keep changing frequencies. Unless we can get their schedule, we can only pick them up hit or miss.”
Andrei grunted. His most urgent job was to set up a solid liaison with the Home Army, but he had been unsuccessful. He turned to Wolf. “Two lessons. First, live with access to the top floor. In danger, we go to the rooftops. Second, this work is neither romantic nor exciting. It is dull and exacting.”
For the next few weeks Wolf learned to stand radio watch and work the printing press. Then Andrei made him memorize the entire Jewish Militia and know which police would “play” for bribes and how much. One by one he learned the secret rooms behind bakeries, in abandoned synagogue basements, where Simon Eden and Rodel, the Communist, and the small nucleus of the underground carried on their sub rosa business.
His prime duty: to distribute the copies of Liberty. Dump them in the market places, drop them at secret rooms, post them on conspicuous walls. As Andrei had warned, it was exacting and tedious work. The streets were more dangerous to travel each day. Piotr Warsinski’s police were pulling people in by the hundreds for the continued feeding of the slave-labor factories.
Dr. Franz Koenig took a quick trip to Berlin to be received by Himmler, personally, and brought back with him a contract for a great portion of the German army’s brushes. The Brushmaker’s complex in the north had to be tripled. When there were no people on the streets, Warsinski ordered indiscriminate raids on homes or the bulging refugee compounds for workers.
Wolf accepted his duties without protest. He envied the Farber sisters. Blond and blue-eyed, they fitted the bill as “Aryans.” Learning the paths of a runner was only a small part of the training.
They had to learn the Catholic Bible forward and backward, how to pray in Latin, how to pray with the rosary. They had to learn to go deaf to the sounds of Yiddish and German, the languages with which they had been raised, in order to “prove” they were not Jewish.
There was one more regular who worked in the loft of the Workman’s Theater, and that was Berchek, a former commercial artist. From time to time “Aryan” Kennkarten, travel papers, and even passports were obtained. These had to be doctored for use by underground members. Berchek taught Wolf the principles of forgery and allowed him to work on the simpler tasks of fixing photographs on the papers.
Andrei was terribly proud of his protégé. The boy learned quickly and responded to orders without question. In one or two tight spots while distributing Liberty, he kept himself out of trouble by quick thinking.
When Wolf went off duty he spent part of the time at home with his parents and his baby brother at Mila 19. Some of the time was with his “adopted” brother, Stephan Bronski. He taught the younger boy his Hebrew and tutored him in basic subjects and played chess and answered a thousand searching questions.
And two or three nights a week he would meet Rachael in Andrei’s flat.
Each time they met, they brought their relationship one step closer to culmination. Each time they chastised themselves and groped and damned. They wanted to try it, desperately. First Wolf, then Rachael took turns in being the stronger to resist. Each time they parted, they parted heartsick but