Mila 18 - Leon Uris [188]
“What’s eating you, Horst?”
“The Jews. They’ll pin a curse on us. They’ll make us a scourge among men for a thousand years.”
“History is written by survivors. There will be no Jewish survivors,” Chris said.
“Hell! They’re uncanny. They have this maddened, insatiable desire to put words on paper. This mania to document their torment.” Horst calmed and thought. “Last time they documented their destruction we got a Bible, then a ‘Valley of Tears’—now what? You know, Chris, my brother was in a Knight Templar colony in Palestine before the war. Every winter he would climb around in caves near the Dead Sea looking for ancient Hebrew letters.”
“Why, Horst, you’re afraid of your hereafter. I wouldn’t have dreamed it.”
“I have a crawling suspicion that inside that ghetto wall are ten thousand diaries buried beneath the ground. And that is what is going to crush us. Not the allied armies, not a few tokens of retribution, but the voices of the dead, unearthed. From this stigma we can never. ... Forgive me, Christmas has a habit of putting me in a mood.”
“What are you going to do with me?” Chris asked sharply.
“I’ve given it a lot of thought I can’t let you out of Poland. I mean, after all, we have to play the game. We both played fairly and I lost I made a bad guess. On the other hand, no use letting Sauer get his hands on you. I am a believer in grandiose gestures! Pack a bag!”
Horst steered his auto down Jerusalem Boulevard. About them a dismal attempt to find Christmas cheer was being made by the Poles and despondent German soldiers.
“Chris, one thing I must know. This Victoria Landowski. Was she a good piece?”
“The truth? I wouldn’t know.”
“Amazing. Simply amazing. Well, we will find her one day.”
“When you do, do me one last favor. Give her a chance to finish herself off before Sauer roughs her up.”
“Chris, you’re asking entirely too much.”
“She is very important to me.”
“Oh well, it is Christmas. My promise. By God, I’m forgetting all my good German training and turning into a downright sentimentalist.”
The car stopped before the ghetto gate opposite the Tlomatskie Synagogue. Horst handed Chris a Kennkarte and special papers. “Into the ghetto. These papers will keep you out of police hands until you find your friends. In three days I’ll turn in a report you are missing. That should give you enough time to get buried in there.”
“I am afraid I have no friends left,” Chris said.
“Don’t be too sure. Jews have an Infallible intelligence system. They will somehow know how the extermination-camp report was spirited out of Poland.”
Chris got out of the car. “You’re one for the books.”
“Well, three cheers for the final triumph of morality in men. If we ever run across one another after the war, put in a good word for me. There is always a demand for ex-German barons as gardeners, bartenders, villain parts in movies. I am a man of many talents.” He sped away.
The ghetto streets were devoid of life. Chris turned up his coat collar and walked aimlessly through the swirls of snow. Eyes were on him from the rooftops the instant he entered. He wandered until he grew weary. Where to go? Whom to see? What a strange ending. Were there people behind the stillness? Was there life left?
Where to go? Where to turn?
“You!”
Chris whirled about. He saw no one in the courtyard from which the voice came.
“You!” it called again.
Chris walked toward the voice. It was coming from an indentation in the building.
“Turn around and walk,” the voice commanded. “Don’t look around. I will give you directions.”
He sat alone on the cot in the attic of Mila 19. Andrei Androfski entered.
Finally Chris stood up and turned his back on Andrei. “Divine retribution.