Mila 18 - Leon Uris [200]
Oh Mary, Mother of God! Help me! I’m going to scream! My leg! Jesus! Jesus! Help me!
“Have your men smash holes in the roof. Jews hide in the roofs!”
They could feel the vibration of the sledge hammers as they splintered the tiles. The ancient beams rattled under the pounding and shot needles of fear through their bodies. Wolf wept softly to himself. Each new blow brought the enemy closer and closer to the edge of the roof.
All Chris could see was his father’s chapel.
Andrei had no thoughts but of that moment when the hammer would burst through and reveal him. He would fire the gun into their rotten faces.
Simon Eden was calm. It did not matter much any more, Simon thought. His parents, his sister and brother were gone. The years as a Labor Zionist organizer had taught him that when the fountains of idealism ran dry one weighed the odds without emotion and accepted reality. This was the end. Trapped in a coffin with rats and spiders. There had been no sweetheart, really. A marriage ended in failure. To be the wife of a Zionist organizer, one had to be a woman like Sylvia Brandel. There had not even been a sweetheart like Gabriela. He envied Andrei. Simon’s only marriage was to Zionism.
They were coming down the roof with ropes around their waists. Andrei prayed as he held his machine pistol ready, his finger quivering on the trigger. There was only one hope.
Perhaps we are so far out on the edge they won’t come down, he thought.
An hour passed. Then two, then three.
At last the hammering above and below them stopped.
The relief from the tension brought on a new realization of physical agony. Their bodies had been cut to a blissful numbness. Chris mumbled hallucinations. They stretched one by one and shifted their positions slightly and massaged themselves and each other to restore circulation.
They had to be quiet; the Ukrainians were still up there. The terror on the streets was unabated.
Wolf played a chess game in his mind. It was the most magnificent jeweled board one could imagine. The black squares were made of solid gold and the white of ivory, each pawn and piece carved of a different precious gem. Move the pawn ... no, the bishop. He tried to think. Then the board would become muddled and the opponent’s chessmen turned to rats and spiders. Why can’t I keep the board straight? Why? I’ve played blindfolded before! The rats ate his chessmen and he could not move his hands to help them. Stop eating my chessmen! Rachael ... Please don’t let me think of Rachael. I’ll cry if I do.
Andrei licked his lips. Food! Oh, look at it. Deborah, you shouldn’t have cooked so much. You cook just like Momma. The gefilte fish is just right. So tasty.
Andrei sniffed. He came out of his trance slowly. Smoke! The brick chimney next to him was becoming warm. German efficiency. Many fireplaces in the ghetto had false coveys for hiding places. This was countered by burning fires in them so any bricked-up Jews would be smoked out. Their hiding place turned into a stifling furnace. The sweat gushed from their bodies, driving them deeper into agony. Whiffs of smoke slithered into the eaves through the crumbled mortar. Andrei gagged and twisted his head to the slit in the eaves to try to suck in a whiff of pure air.
“The smoke is coming through that one down there!” he could hear someone shout “Mark it off the list.”
Andrei closed his eyes again and dreamed of food.
The high-pitched multi-thousand-cycle cries of bats.
Simon’s dream of cold and wet made him urinate.
Andrei opened his eyes. He could hear the flapping wings and the vibrations. Dream or real? Dream or real? Dream or real? Oh God, I’m hungry. Tiny droplets of light sparkled off and on, off and on. Andrei looked through the slit in the boards. Outside, a glaring, artificial light. He turned over again and watched the sparkling overhead. They were beams of searchlights pushing through cracks in the roof. It must be night. He listened