Mila 18 - Leon Uris [189]
Andrei sat at the wooden table and placed his elbow in the center. “Want to hand-wrestle? I haven’t eaten as well as you, but I can still beat you.”
“Don’t you know me, Andrei? I stood by with my hands in my pockets and my ears deafened to the cries of the dying.”
“Must you be so dramatic? All I want to do is hand-wrestle.”
“Andrei ...”
“We know how that report reached London, Chris. Thank you.”
Chris bit his lip to hold off tears.
“We got a horse over the wall this morning. Steaks tonight. Take this pistol. Later I’ll show you how to move around. I’ll put up another cot here for you. When you hear five alarm bells in short rings, it is a friend. Long dashes, we go to the roof. We must be very careful. The roofs are icy.”
“Andrei ...”
“Never mind. I understand.”
Chris was alone. He peered out of the slanting garret window. The snow had stopped, revealing the spires of churches beyond the wall. The churches would be filled with kneeling, praying, singing people. Meager gifts would be exchanged, and for an instant the spirit of goodness would pass through people. Would they think for a fleeting moment of those inside the ghetto? Would they remember that Jesus was a Jew? Chris was flooded with a strange, wonderful, warm sensation, and peace filled his body and his heart. It was a comfort he had never known in a restless, searching life. Now he had captured it.
Five short rings.
“Deborah ...”
“Don’t say anything. Just let me hold you, Chris. Don’t speak ... don’t speak ... Just let me hold you.”
Part Four
DAWN
Chapter One
Journal Entry
ALEXANDER BRANDEL CONTINUES TO be morose and uncommunicative. He has barely spoken to any of us all winter. The Orphans and Self-Help Society still “legally” exists and carries immune Kennkarten. I have assumed Alexander’s duties, such as they “officially” remain. There is still much intercourse with the Civil Authority on rations, etc.
The ghetto is like a morgue. It is impossible to believe that the face of the moon could be more quiet and deserted than the ghetto streets. During the Big Action the women going to the Umschlagplatz for deportation wanted to carry their silk comforters and feather beds, but they were too bulky. So they cut them open and dumped the feathers and goose down on the roofs so they could carry the outer cover (in hopes of finding something to refill them with at their destination). In some places the feathers are ankle-deep on the roofs, and when a wind blows it looks like snow coming down. Always, feathers drift down to add to the haunting stillness.
We think there are forty thousand of us left. Several thousand are at the Brushmaker’s and the uniform factory. There are some of us “authorized” personnel left, a thousand or so. (Why, we do not know.) Mostly there are Wild Ones. The ghetto has been transformed into an underground city with mazes of tunnels, hidden rooms, and cellars dug under cellars. The Militia and Nightingales wrecked all the vacant houses, so they are thoroughly uninhabitable.
We are completely shut off from the little ghetto, which has been devoid of Jews for almost a year, except for the woodwork factory, which has now closed. Poles are moving back into the former little ghetto, scrambling for the fine houses on Sienna and Sliska streets, which they are able to get without compensation to the departed occupants.
This winter we have concentrated in getting key people into the Aryan side. David Zemba reluctantly left the ghetto with his family, but I hear he continues to live in Warsaw, refusing to leave the country. We have been able to place six of the children (who escaped the Niska orphanage and live in the cellar of Mila 19) in the Franciscan Sisters’ convent in Laski.
Joint Forces has about seven hundred fighters in training, learning street-fighting tactics, the handling of our various weapons, and the routes over the roofs. We have twenty so-called battle companies, about one third armed. There are seven Labor Zionist companies, two