Mila 18 - Leon Uris [137]
Each step now made him catch a vignette of squalor, of pain. Each step churned his queasy belly close to a vomit. A lice-riddled ragged remnant of what had once been a human being lay in front of him.
The mosaic of misery, the montage of horror became blurred. He was walking on a small square.
“Armbands! Buy armbands!”
“Books for sale. Twenty zlotys a dozen.” Spinoza for a penny, Talmud for a dime. A lifetime collection of wisdom. Buy it in gross lots for kindling ... keep my family alive one more day.
“Mattress for sale! Guaranteed lice-free!”
Two children blocked Chris’s way. Warped, inhuman. “Mister, a zloty!” one whined. The second, a smaller brother or sister too weak to cry for food. Only the lips trembled.
“Do you want a lady’s company? Nice virgin girl from a good Hassidic family. Only a hundred zlotys.”
“My son’s violin. Imported from Austria before the war ... Please, a beautiful instrument.”
“Mister, how much for my wedding ring? Solid gold.”
A long line of scraggly, ragged humanity getting a dole of watery broth at a soup kitchen. The line pressed forward, stepping wearily over a corpse of one who had died en route to the soup.
An old man collapses in the gutter with hunger. No one looks.
A child sits propped up against a wall, covered with sores and lice bites and burning with fever, moaning pitifully. No one looks.
Loudspeakers boom. “Achtung! All Jews in Group Fourteen will report tomorrow to the Jewish Civil Authority at 0800 promptly for deportation for volunteer labor. Failure to report for volunteer labor is punishable by death.”
The “kings” from the Big Seven with flour and meat and vegetables make their barters quietly, in whispers against the walls, in the alcoves, in the courtyards.
A Nazi sergeant from Sieghold Stutze’s Reinhard Corps stands in the middle of Zamenhof Street. Bike rikshas, the basic mode of transportation, swirl around him. Each riksha comes to a halt before the “master” and doffs his cap and bows.
Clang! Clang! The bulging red and yellow streetcar with the big Star of David on its front and sides.
“Achtung! Jews, listen! Green ration stamps are hereby ruled invalid.”
Another corpse ... another ... another.
Billboards filled with directives, BY ORDER OF THE JEWISH CIVIL AUTHORITY the building at Gensia 33 is declared contaminated.
Walls hold torn corners of posters and publications of the underground press ripped down by the Jewish Militia.
The Jewish Militia. Fat and brutal, beating a herd of hapless girls with their clubs as they push them north to their destination in the Brushmaker’s factory.
Chris doubled over in the seat before the desk in Susan Geller’s office at the orphanage. His face was chalky, his stomach churning, ready to rebel at one more sight, one more smell.
Susan closed the door and stood over him. He stumbled to his feet.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner,” Chris said. “I got back from the front and ran into a pile of trouble. You know it’s very difficult for me to get in here.”
Susan was immobile, wordless.
“I tried to get Rosy back.”
“I’m sure you did everything you could,” she said coldly. “It is just as well for him to be in the ghetto. With Ervin’s Jewish nose, the hoodlums would always attack him, even with his fancy immunity papers.”
“Where is he, Susan?”
“We live at Mila 19 with the others.”
Chris grunted. “Lord, I didn’t even bring you a wedding present.”
“It isn’t necessary.”
“Susan, is there anything I can do? Anything you want or need?”
She walked to the glass door which overlooked a sea of cots jammed together holding a hundred typhus-riddled children. Do? “Surely that must be the understatement of all time.”
Her coldness reached him. “Susan, what have I done?”
“Nothing, Chris. There is one thing you can do. It will be a very fine wedding present for me and Ervin. You know what kind of work Ervin does. I beg you not to betray him to the Germans.”
“I am sorry that you feel it necessary to say that to me.”
Susan turned on him. “Please, Mr. de Monti. No lectures about honor and