Mila 18 - Leon Uris [26]
“One day I was making my deliveries. I had a pal from the cheder—that’s our parochial school. Funny, I don’t even remember his name. But I can see his face so plain. He was skinny—half my size. We crossed Krasinski Square, and the goyim trapped us right in front of their goddamned cathedral. I started to run. But this kid—wish I could remember his name—he grabbed me and made me set the chickens down in back of us.
“Funny, not running. When the first one came to me I hit him. I could whip most of the kids in my neighborhood, but I never thought of hitting a goy. He went down to the pavement—he got up mad, his nose was busted. I hit him again, and he went down again and just lay there and moaned!—and I turned and looked at the rest of them, and they backed up and I kept walking forward and I ran at them and they ran away! I caught another one and beat the hell out of him. Me! Andrei Androfski from Stawki Street had beaten up two goyim.”
And he dropped from the elation of the memory of triumph back to his drunkenness. “That’s why I’m a phony Zionist, Gaby. I hate that damned Zionist farm. I don’t want to spend my life in little bare rooms over union halls. Bronski knows this—I’m not going to sit in any damned swamp in Palestine.”
“Then why, Andrei—why?”
“Because in the Bathyrans I have a dozen, two dozen friends who are together with me. So long as we hang together, no one can steal our chickens. All I want, Gaby, is to be able to live without running.”
Spent and weary, Andrei lay back on the bed slowly. “I forced them to make me a Ulany officer. I, Andrei Androfski, a Zionist leader, made them make me a Ulany officer. But I can feel their eyes on my back. Jew, they say to themselves—Jew. But they do not say it to my face. ...”
“Shhh, darling. You are not fighting now.”
“Gaby, I’m so tired. So tired of battling for everyone. I am tired of being the great Andrei Androfski.”
“It’s all right, dear. You rest now.”
She dimmed the lights and lay beside him and soothed him until he fell into a fitful thrashing sleep.
What is the best Sehora?
My baby will learn Torah,
Seforim he will write for me,
And a pious Jew he’ll always be.
Momma’s song. Momma’s lullaby. Andrei blinked his eyes open. His fingers felt the pillow. There was a bad taste in his mouth.
What is the best Sehora?
My baby will learn Torah ...
Andrei sat up quickly. He shook his fuzzy head. Gabriela awoke the instant Andrei did, but she lay motionless and watched him swing his legs to the floor, weave his way into his tunic and walk out of the french doors and stand on the balcony. A quiet, sleeping Warsaw was before him.
Seforim he will write for me,
And a pious Jew he’ll always be.
“Poppa,” Andrei whispered. “Poppa.”
Israel Androfski stood before him. His black coat stained and threadbare. His silver-and-black beard ungroomed because of weariness, and his eyes half closed with the strain of the hard life etched into face and posture.
Andrei could smell the poverty of Stawki Street.
“In cheder you will learn to find comfort in the Torah and the Talmud and the Midrash. You go to school tomorrow to begin your swim in the Sea of Talmud and gather the wisdoms which will give you the strength and understanding to live as a good and pious man all your life.”
Little Andrei babbled his excitement in Yiddish, eager to start his training in one of Warsaw’s six hundred Jewish schools.
Rabbi Gewirtz stood warming his hands on the fireless stove in a dingy room before a handful of shivering students.
“You see, Kinder, we Jews have been in Diaspora sincethe destruction of the Second Temple and the great dispersion nearly two thousand years ago. ...”
... In the Crimea during the Byzantine era, the Khazars, a war-like people, adopted Judaism, but in the tenth century the Khazars were defeated and dispersed by the Russians much as the Jews were driven from the Holy Land. The Russians swept them