Mila 18 - Leon Uris [226]
One thing is certain. The Germans do not wish to fight with us. The ghetto is plastered with “peace” posters urging the people to come out and report for labor. Joint Forces continues to warn of the dangers. We permit no volunteers for deportation.
How long will the Germans continue to tolerate our behavior? It is already the first week in April. We expect the ax to fall at any moment.
ALEXANDER BRANDEL
Dusk, the quiet transition to darkness, brought Deborah Bronski and forty children from the ages of three to ten years through a tunnel beneath Mila 18 to a courtyard near Muranowski Place.
They emerged singly from beneath the earth, gasping deeply to fill their lungs with pure air, and they blinked at the intensity of the dying daylight.
Jewish Fighters on the roof above them crisscrossed back and forth to guard the precious ones from a sudden attack. Sylvia Brandel was the last to emerge. They ran and jumped and rolled around and skipped and clapped hands with the joy of the release from bondage. Soon ... soon it would be springtime.
In a few moments the children played games that children play in a ghetto. They played the game of “smuggler,” hiding an object from the searching “Nazis and Nightingales.” They played “escape,” weaving in and out of passages of the abandoned house to reach the “Aryan side” past the “Polish Blues.” They played “Jewish Fighters and Germans,” peppering each other with imaginary bullets and bombs.
Everyone wanted to be Atlas and Jan and Chess Master and Tolstoy. The girls wanted to be Tanya, like Ana Grinspan, or Rachael Bronski. No one wanted to be Pharaoh or Brunhilde or Nazis or Nightingales or Polish Blues.
“Bang! Bang! I caught you, Jew!”
A little boy tripped and fell in the courtyard and his nose bled. He did not cry although he was in pain, for he was taught not to cry when he was hurt. Nazis and their dogs listened for crying children, to find hiding places.
Deborah hugged the boy and stopped the bleeding. In a moment he darted up the steps to resume the game.
She looked at her watch. In a moment Rachael would be coming. Strange, Deborah thought, that after a time a person would begin to take on the characteristics of a rat or a mole. Living beneath the earth should dim human values. Tragedy should immunize one to pain. Darkness should ease loneliness. It was not that way at all. Her heart ached again and again when the Fighters brought a warped little body to the children’s room in Mila 18. A whimpering skeleton salvaged from the cold sidewalk or dark alley or abandoned, shattered room. Deborah cried when it was dark for their wild little eyes and their sharp nails which lashed out like those of frightened animals. She cried at the slow, torturous inability to respond to tenderness.
How she missed Rachael. That loneliness never left her.
And Stephan. The gnawing fear each time he left the bunker with Andrei. How many times can a person die without the nerves dying too?
If only Rachael could stay with her. It was dangerous for the girl to come out of the Franciskanska bunker at night to visit. But Rachael should be with Wolf. There was no room for the children other than at Mila 18.
“Saska Kempa,” a Fighter called down from the roof.
“Grochow,” a girl’s voice called up from the street, answering the password.
Rachael was coming diagonally across the courtyard. Deborah could not distinguish her face from the distance. She wore new knee-length boots and a leather jacket crisscrossed with a pair of bandoliers. Grenades were hooked into the belts, a rifle was slung over her shoulder, and her black hair was knotted up under a worker’s cap. In her hand she carried Wolf’s guitar. Despite the subterfuge, it was still Rachael. Nothing could keep her from walking like a woman. Nothing could taint her softness.
“Hello, Momma.”
“Hello, darling.”
They kissed cheeks.
“Where is Stephan?”
“Out with Andrei. Why isn’t Wolf with you?”
“He’s holding pistol drill at the factory.”
“Maybe