Mila 18 - Leon Uris [166]
“Do you really believe that, Jan?”
“I have to believe it.”
Styka shook his head slowly. “I am only a simple soldier. I cannot think things out too well. Until I was transferred into the Seventh Ulanys I was like every other Pole in my feeling about Jews. I hated you when I first came in. But ... my captain might have been a Jew, but he wasn’t a Jew. What I mean is, he was a Pole and the greatest soldier in the Ulanys. Hell, sir. The men of our company had a dozen fights defending your name. You never knew about it, but by God, we taught them respect for Captain Androfski.”
Andrei smiled.
“Since the war I have seen the way the Germans have behaved and I think, Holy Mother, we have behaved like this for hundreds of years. Why?”
“How can you tell an insane man to reason or a blind man to see?”
“But we are neither blind nor insane. The men of your company would not allow your name dishonored. Why do we let the Germans do this?”
“I have sat many hours with this, Styka. All I ever wanted was to be a free man in my own country. I’ve lost faith, Styka. I used to love this country and believe that someday we’d win our battle for equality. But now I think I hate it very much.”
“And do you really think that the world outside Poland will care any more than we do?”
The question frightened Andrei.
“Please don’t go inside Majdanek.”
“I’m still a soldier in a very small way, Styka.”
It was an answer that Styka understood.
Grabski’s shanty was beyond the bridge over the River Bystrzyca near the rail center. Grabski sat in a sweat-saturated undershirt, cursing the excessive heat which clamped an uneasy stillness before sundown. He was a square brick of a man with a moon-round face and sunken Polish features. Flies swarmed around the bowl of lentils in which he mopped thick black bread. Half of it dripped down his chin. He washed it down with beer and produced a deep-seated belch.
“Well?” Andrei demanded.
Grabski looked at the pair of them. He grunted a sort of “yes” answer. “My cousin works at the Labor Bureau. He can make you work papers. It will take a few days. I will get you inside the guard camp as a member of my crew. I don’t know if I can get you into the inner camp. Maybe yes, maybe no, but you can observe everything from the roof of a barrack we are building.”
Grabski slurped his way to the bottom of the soup bowl. “Can’t understand why the hell anyone wants to go inside that son-of-a-bitch place.”
“Orders from the Home Army.”
“Why? Nothing there but Jews.”
Andrei shrugged. “We get strange orders.”
“Well—what about the money?”
Andrei peeled off five one-thousand-zloty notes. Grabski had never seen so much money. His broad flat fingers, petrified into massive sausages by years of bricklaying, snatched the bills clumsily. “This ain’t enough.”
“You’ll get the rest when I’m safely out of Majdanek.”
“I ain’t taking no goddamned chances for no Jew business.”
Andrei and Styka were silent Grabski looked from one to the other, snarling, bullying. He quickly realized that the men before him were as large and tough as the Death’s-Head Corps. He knew, too, Styka would kill him. Grabski grunted, cursed, and shoved the money into his pants pocket. “Be here in the morning at six. We’ll get started on the work pass.”
A sudden northeast breeze blew the sack curtains into the room, bringing in a terrible stench, nauseating the men. Grabski shoved away from the table and slammed the window shut. “Every time the wind blows we get that smell from Majdanek.”
Andrei and Styka stood behind Grabski. Styka pointed to the skyline a few kilometers away where grayish smoke fizzled from a tall chimney.
“That’s it,” Styka said, “Majdanek.”
“Only way the Jews leave that camp is through the chimney,” Grabski said. Amused at discovering himself a humorist, he broke into a fit of laughter.
Chapter Eight
HORST VON EPP WAITED with an infinite, knowing patience for Christopher de Monti to unravel after he had made his visit to the ghetto. Horst played