Mila 18 - Leon Uris [129]
“I am sorry, Mr. de Monti. Herr von Epp is in Berlin for a conference.”
“When will he be back?”
“I am sorry. I don’t have the information.”
“Well, where can I reach him in Berlin?”
“I am sorry. I don’t have that information.”
A second minor official was equally sorry and uninformative about the revoking of Ervin Rosenblum’s credentials, and a third minor official was sorry about the suspension of Chris’s wire to Switzerland.
“Sorry, Mr. de Monti. Until further instructions you will have to file all dispatches here at the Bureau for Censorship.”
Chris was tired and his head was fuzzy from the long trip back from the front lines. He stifled his irritation, knowing nothing could be done until he could put the pieces back in place. A hot bath and a tall drink and the things that a man looks forward to after living in the mud were in order.
While he soaked arid sipped he decided not to pursue it any more until he could get his mind straight after a night’s sleep.
Chris hid himself at a corner table at Bruhl House to avoid conversation and nibbled his way halfheartedly through a leather-tough schnitzel. The room was filled with guttural sounds of talk about the eastern front, the voices sharp with confidence.
“You are not hungry tonight, Mr. de Monti?” the waiter asked patronizingly as Chris gave up. “It is getting more and more difficult to put together an eatable menu. They ... get it all.”
Chris signed the bill and wandered out into the street. Warsaw was a gay place these days. The city was filled with German troops having their last fling before shipment to the eastern front. Although the Polish people were open in their hatred of the enemy, there were enough women not annoyed with patriotic considerations to give the German lads a good time. Brothels reaped a fortune, beer and vodka and goldwasser flowed in the taverns, and even the ancient streetwalkers struck an unexpected vein of gold.
Most of Warsaw’s musicians were Jews. German soldiers and their girls slipped into the ghetto to dance and live it up in one of the fifty night clubs, mainly operated by the Big Seven, for the music on the Aryan side was dreadful.
Chris walked for several blocks. He was weary and unsettled from the shocks of war and hung in limbo by the sudden turn of events in Warsaw.
From the taverns, there was riotous singing from Germans as drunk as Poles and from Poles as drunk as Poles. In order to avoid further accosting by the streetwalkers, he crossed at Pilsudski Square and stopped to get his bearings.
Back to his car and home? No. Damned apartment gave him the creeps.
Track down a party? A good bender and maybe a little action afterward? No.
Chris looked around, then found himself walking up a footpath in the Saxony Gardens, which seemed more delightful with every step because it put the sounds of Warsaw behind him. It grew darker and dimmer as he walked. All he could hear now were occasional squeals from the bushes by roomless couples consummating their deals. Now and then a self-conscious pair emerged from the thickets or down the path, avoiding his eyes.
Chris walked past the swan lake. So often he had waited there for Deborah ... sitting on the bench ... waiting for her to appear. That first wonderful instant he would see her ... That moment never changed, never dulled.
Damned fool, sitting here. Deborah isn’t coming up the path—there won’t be a tryst. No beautiful Deborah to see through the velvet curtains. Only a roomful of microphones and hidden eyes.
Chris was magnetically drawn to the ghetto wall. He crossed the Saxony Gardens and wandered along Chlodna Street, which divided the big and little ghettos. On both sides of him was the wall. The night lights caught the broken glass cemented on the top, causing it to sparkle like the sudden glint of a rat’s eyes.
So dark ... so quiet. It was hard to comprehend that six hundred thousand people lay in silence on the other side. All that could be heard was the