Mila 18 - Leon Uris [146]
He stopped when she abruptly slapped his face. Then he shrugged. “I don’t see why you have to take that attitude. Frankly, let’s admit it. We are getting a little tired of each other. At least I am. Well, that’s life. We should be civilized and shake hands and wish each other luck. After all ...”
“Get out!”
Andrei walked briskly down the street, knowing that her eyes were on his back. He turned the corner out of her sight and stopped and leaned against the building and touched the place where she had slapped him and choked back the tears. Insurmountable grief overcame him, and he sank to a sitting position on the pavement and dropped his head into his arms, which were drawn around his knees.
“Drunk,” several people commented, passing him by.
A pair of Polish Blue policemen hovered over him. “Get to your feet,” one ordered, prodding him with the club.
“Leave me alone,” Andrei mumbled, “just leave me alone.”
They bent down on either side of him, grabbed him under the armpits, and pulled him to his feet. “Let’s see your Kennkarte!”
Andrei grabbed them by the scruffs of their necks and banged their heads together. Both of them reeled about, bloody and half-senseless. Andrei staggered down the street, blinded by his own tears.
Across the street a pair of German soldiers crisscrossed in square movements before the iron gates of the home of a high Nazi. Andrei became aware of the pipe grenade tied to his arm. His right hand fished up the sleeve of his left arm and pulled it free.
He waited until the Germans approached each other and timed his throw to hit at their feet as they crossed. The pipe arched end over end, hit the sidewalk, gave one short clatter. Then a flash and a racket and then screams.
Ana waited in Andrei’s flat. His dazed eyes, his incoherent movement alarmed her.
“Andrei!”
He shook his head hard, spiraling back to reality.
“What happened? What’s wrong? What did she say?”
Andrei lurched for the cabinet holding his hoard of a half bottle of vodka. A stiff drink straightened him up. “What would you expect her to say when I broke in unannounced and found her and her Polish lover rolling around on the bed?”
“Oh, Andrei! I am sorry.”
“Never mind—never mind. I’ve been suspecting it for a long time. No matter. Tomorrow I’ll go out and start setting up other contacts.”
In the days after, Andrei suffered a torment he did not realize existed. Throughout the nights he sulked in agony, trying to find a secret source of strength to keep him from crawling back to Gabriela. He was unable to eat. He became weak. He slept only when drugged exhaustion came over him, and his sleep was in snatches filled with teasing, hurting dreams. Each memory of his Gabriela plunged him to a new depth of torment. He moved about the ghetto with a listlessness that matched the listlessness of life around him. It was as though the will to live had left him for the first time.
A few days before Christmas, Andrei dragged himself up the stairs to his flat.
Gabriela Rak stood behind the table. He had seen her in dreams with haunting reality. But now—a hallucination in the middle of the day! The end was coming. He knew he was losing his mind. The vision refused to disappear. “Gaby?” he said, half frightened.
“Yes,” she answered in a voice so crisp as to dispel the illusion.
“What the hell are you doing in the ghetto!” he roared. “How did you get in?”
“You are not the sole custodian of cleverness in the human race.”
“I demand to know—”
“Kindly don’t shout.”
“—how you got in.”
“I work for the Ursuline Sisters, remember? The convent has a church. My good friend Father Kornelli is the priest. Father Kornelli told me that Father Jakub at the Convert’s Church needed more candles for Christmas day, so I volunteered to bring them. Wasn’t that nice of me?”
Suddenly Andrei felt the presence of someone else in the flat. He turned his eyes slowly