Mila 18 - Leon Uris [175]
In these days the lines of deportees were not so orderly as in the beginning. Bribe money flashed all over the Umschlagplatz. When there was no money, the deportees offered the guards watches, rings, furs—anything—to buy their way back into the ghetto for another day, another hour. And each day the marches to the trains were halted dozens of times by frantic bursts for freedom which only intensified the brutality of the guards.
And each day when the trains pulled out at three o’clock there were leftovers in the square. These prisoners were taken to the top floor of the selection building, to be first in line for deportation the next day. Each night the Ukrainian guards stripped the prisoners, searching for valuables. Women were taken to the lower floors of the building and raped.
On the twelfth day of the Big Action, the Bathyran Council met and demanded from Alex that he stay out of the Umschlagplatz. Tolek and Ana pleaded that a whim of Kutler or Stutze would cancel their deal and threaten his own life. Alex would have none of it, not even their orders nor, finally, their threats to restrain him. For so many years he had battled to breathe life into the dying. He could not hold back the flood, but he was frantic to salvage the product of a great culture.
And on the next day he milled in the courtyard of the Umschlagplatz, as usual.
“Alex! Come quickly. Rabbi Solomon has passed from the selection center. They’re taking him to the cemetery for execution.”
Alex raced over the square, stumbling, gasping, into the building, down the corridor, past the guard, into Kutler’s office. The captain was more than halfway through his first bottle of schnapps and it was not yet noon. Alexander completely lost his composure.
“The Rabbi Solomon!” he cried.
“Don’t push your luck, Jew boy,” Kutler blurted.
Alex panicked.
“A hundred dollars!”
“Hundred?” He began to laugh. “Hundred for that old Jew carcass? God damn. The price for old Jews is good today. He’s all yours, Jew boy.”
As Alex sighed and reeled out, Kutler reared back and laughed until the tears came to his eyes.
In the middle of the night Sylvia Brandel tiptoed down to Alexander’s office. Mila 19 was asleep except for the guards. Earlier in the day she had tried to go to him, but his door was locked. He refused to answer her calls. She did not know whether to be angry or hurt or to try to approach him with sympathy or to leave him alone. It was indeed strange behavior for Alex. She rattled on the doorknob and knocked again. He opened it and walked away from her.
Sylvia stared at his back, trying to adjust to the awesome experience, for Alexander was not like other men. He had always been a strong stone lighthouse for people to look up to find light and shelter. In twenty years of marriage she could not remember him floundering or crying for help. At first she was troubled that he did not seem to need the compassion that other men needed, but she learned to revere him and to five to serve him. Alex lived in his own world, a strange mixture of ideals and ideas, and he functioned with inexhaustible reservoirs of patience and courage. It was frightening to see him derailed.
“How is Rabbi Solomon?” he asked.
“We have a cot set up for him in the Good Fellowship room in the cellar. Ervin will stay with him tonight. Alex, will you eat something? There is some soup left in the kitchen.”
“I’m not hungry,” he whispered.
“It’s almost three o’clock. Please come up to bed.”
He flopped at his desk, and his face dropped into his hands in utter defeat.
“Alex, I have never questioned your decisions, but I beg you—don’t go to the Umschlagplatz again. There is a limit to what I can stand too.”
Tears welled in the corners of his eyes and rolled to nothing halfway down his cheek.
“No man can continue as you