Mila 18 - Leon Uris [21]
“I’m not joking, Alex. Here I am, twenty-six years old, and what am I? Fighting for a cause that’s all but hopeless. Putting on a big front all the time ... working the clock out ... living in rooms like this ... Maybe I’m crazy for not taking the one chance I’ll ever have to really be something. I walked today. I walked and I thought. I walked around Stawki Street where I lived when I was a boy, and it scared me a little—maybe that’s where I’ll end up when all this is over. And I walked to the Avenue of the Marshals and Jerusalem Boulevard. That’s where I could be if I set my mind to it.”
“And while you were walking, did you walk along the Square of the Three Crosses and past the American Embassy?”
Andrei turned around angrily.
“Thompson at the Embassy called me up and invited me to lunch today. It seems there is a young lady there almost as miserable as you are.”
“God Almighty! Can’t I even have a broken heart in privacy?”
“Not if you’re Andrei Androfski.”
“I don’t want a lecture about Jewish boys and shikses.”
Alex shrugged. “If a shikse was good enough for Moses, a shikse is good enough for Androfski. I know all the things you are thinking now. Why am I here? Why am I beating my brains out doing this? But if you are able to believe in Zionism the same way some of the priests and nuns believe in Catholicism and the same way the Hassidim believe in Judaism, then you will find the ultimate reward of peace of mind greater than any sacrifice.”
Andrei knew the words came from a man who could have gained great recognition and economic reward had he not chosen the path of Zionism. Somehow, Alex did not seem to be giving anything up. If only he could believe in Zionism like that.
“Andrei, you stand for something to all of us. We love you.”
“So I will lower myself in the eyes of my friends and I will hurt them by taking up with a Catholic girl.”
“I said we love you. The only way you could ever hurt your true friends is by hurting yourself.”
“Do me a favor and go home, Alex.”
Alexander Brandel put all his papers together and stuffed them into his battered brief case. He stuck his cap on his head and wrapped the muffler, which he wore summer or winter, about his neck, and walked to the door.
“Alex!”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry. I’ll—be off duty in a week. I’ll take that trip to Lodz right away. Maybe I should also swing around the country and see the chapters in Lublin and Lemberg.”
“That may be a good idea,” Alex said.
After Alex had left Andrei poured himself a half glass of vodka, downed it in a single swallow, and took up a caged pacing of the confines of the room.
He stopped and wound up his record player. A scratchy sonata struggled its way flatly out of the sound head. He turned off the lights except the one over the table in the center of the room and walked to his books. He took a book of Hayim Nachman Bialik, the prince of poets of Zionism.
“This is the last generation of Jews which will live in bondage and the first which will live in freedom,” Bialik had written. He was in no mood for Bialik. Another book. One filled with fury. Here. John Steinbeck, his favorite author.
IN DUBIOUS BATTLE
Innumerable force of Spirits armed,
That durst dislike his reign, and, me preferring,
His utmost power with adverse power opposed,
In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven
And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?
All is not lost—the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield;
And what is else not to be overcome?
Andrei filled his glass again. Now there is a man who understands, he thought. Steinbeck knows of fighting for lost causes. In dubious battle ... His battle ...
There was a soft, almost imperceptible knock on the door.
“Come in, it’s open.”
Gabriela Rak stood in the doorway. Andrei seized the edge of the table, daring not to move or speak. She walked across the room into the shadow of the books. “I thought