Mila 18 - Leon Uris [133]
But always, anger surged. Rebellion against tyranny. He was overpowered by this drive to throw off his containment and fight.
And Gaby. He was remorseful about her too. What kind of life had he given her? He had taken her from a world in which she thrived and placed demands upon her, giving little or nothing in return. When the command in the Home Army comes, maybe I will get away from Warsaw. Then perhaps she can forget about me slowly and find the thread of a decent life.
At long last the word came back through super-cautious networks of information that Roman would see him. It was with an immense feeling of relief that he followed out the instructions. A contact in Praga. A blindfolded ride back over the river. Two dozen false turns to throw off his sense of direction. Men whispering, leading him up a dirt path. A door, a room. Where was he? He did not know exactly.
“You may take off the blindfold,” a high tenor voice said in immaculate Polish.
Andrei adjusted his eyes to the shadows of the room. They were in a large shed. Crude curtains shutting out light. A kerosene lantern on a shelf. A cot. A few garden tools.
Roman’s face came across the flicker of light. He had seen the prototype of Roman a thousand times in a thousand places. Tall, erect, blond, high forehead, curly hair. He wore the unmaskable glower of perpetual arrogance of a Polish nobleman. It was the sneer of a Ulany colonel, the innuendo of superiority, the thin mocking lips. Andrei could almost tell Roman’s story. The son of a count. Landed gentry. Misused wealth. Medieval mentality. Roman most likely lived in the South of France before the war. He cared damn little about Poland except to bleed his estate dry with the blood of legalized serfdom. He saw damned little of Poland except during the social season.
Andrei’s estimation was deadly accurate. Like many of his ilk, Roman had become suddenly smitten with latent Polish “nationalism” after the invasion. He joined the government in exile in London because it was the fashionable thing to do. London was jammed with Poles who gathered to hear Chopin and recite poetry and live memories of Warsaw in the “good old days.”
He parachuted into Poland to work with the Home Army, a play of immature romanticism. Despite the guise of workman’s clothing, Roman’s frailties shone like a beacon. “You are persistent, Jan Kowal,” Roman said to Andrei.
“Only as persistent as you are evasive,” Andrei answered.
“Cigarette?” American, of course. He’d rough it later with the local product. No use carrying nationalism to extremes.
“I don’t smoke.”
Roman did. With a long cigarette holder.
“You’re Androfski, aren’t you?”
“That’s right.”
“I remember seeing you in Berlin in the Olympics.”
Andrei began to have that uneasy feeling he had had a thousand times in the presence of the Romans. He could read the thoughts hidden behind Roman’s eyes.
... Jew boy. We had Jewish families on our estate. Two of them. One was the village tailor. Had a little son with earlocks. I beat the hell out of him with my horsewhip. He wouldn’t fight—only pray. The other Jew ... grain merchant. Thief. Cheat. Always had my father indebted to him. The inbred hatred of centuries could not be belied by Roman’s small, tight smile.
“I am afraid,” Roman said, “that our position is such that you cannot expect too much co-operation from us at the present time. Perhaps later, as we are better organized ...
“You mistake my mission,” Andrei said. “I represent only myself. I wish to place myself at the service of the Home Army. A fighting command, preferred.”
“Oh, I see. That puts a different light on everything.” Roman’s slim elegant fingers caressed the long cigarette holder. “The Home Army does not work under conditions of a peacetime military force, naturally. All our people are volunteers.