Mila 18 - Leon Uris [264]
“Deborah! Deborah! Deborah!”
“So good ... you holding ... me ... Andrei ... I lost my pill ... please ... give ... me ... one.”
Andrei reached in his breast pocket and took a small cyanide capsule and put it against his sister’s parched lips.
“So good ... you holding me ... I was afraid I’d be alone. Andrei ... sing Momma’s song ... when we were children ...”
“What is the best Sehora?
My baby ... will ... learn the Torah. ...”
Chapter Twenty-two
GABRIELA BOLTED UPRIGHT IN bed, her heart pounding unmercifully. A dream of a chill wind passing through the room was unfounded. She perspired from the clarity of the nightmare. Andrei was a ghost floating over the smoldering rubble of the ghetto. She rolled to one side and squinted to read the luminous dial of the bedside clock. Three forty-five.
She flicked on the radio automatically, as she always did during the waking hours. Perhaps there would be a radio signal from the ghetto transmitter today. There had been none for twenty-six days, since the last time they fetched four children out of the sewers and took them to Father Kornelli. Twenty-six days of silence.
She slipped into a dressing gown and walked out to the fifth-story balcony. Far from the dream of cold, it was warmish out, fighting its way into late spring. Moonlight threw light on the ghetto. She watched for ever so long, just as she had stood and watched for hour after hour during the day. She had taken the new apartment because of its view of the ghetto.
The artillery fire had stopped. Almost nothing remained standing. The moonbeams played on disorganized heaps of brick.
Beep ... beep ... beep ...
A weak sound came from her radio.
She ran into the room.
Beep ... beep ... The signal faded and became drowned in static and re-emerged. Beep ... beep ... beep.
It stopped.
She sat with bated breath for a repeat. There was no further sound.
Then from the ghetto a sudden crackle of gunfire startled the stillness. She ran once more to the balcony but could see nothing. The gunfire sounds heightened.
Gabriela closed the balcony door, pulled down the blackout curtain, and flicked on the lamp beside the phone stand. She hedged for several moments, hoping that the transmission from the ghetto would be repeated. She lit a cigarette and pulled at it nervously, then with an impulsive spur of decision dialed a number.
A half-sleeping voice answered at the other end of the line.
“Kamek. This is Alena,” Gabriela said.
“Yes?”
“Did you hear it?”
“Yes, but I could not understand it.”
“Neither could I,” Gabriela said. “What should we do?”
“There is nothing we can do until after curfew. Come over to my place as soon as it turns light.”
Oberführer Funk blinked sleepily over the report. It was almost four o’clock in the morning, yet he wanted it for Kroger, Globocnik, and Himmler, finished and en route by dawn. It was precariously close to the one month marking the uprising. He wanted to give assurances that the bulk of action was over. Any further action was merely the formality of a mop-up. Soon, quite soon, victory could be formally declared.
Four o’clock.
Funk untied his silk night robe.
The sound of gunfire! What the devil! It was not possible. He had ordered the artillery to cease fire at two-thirty and for the patrols to resume their fixed positions.
He tied his robe quickly and started to lift the phone, then let his hand drop. A sudden grip of fear encompassed him. Could it be possible that the Jews were attacking? No ... it was ... discovery of another bunker, that was all. Don’t let your imagination run wild. Calm ... calm, now. Another large belt of schnapps and he sat slowly behind his desk again.
The crackling gunfire was sharper now. His hand once more touched the phone, fell from it. He licked his dry lips, sagged in the chair, and waited. The report to Berlin, Lublin, and Krakow lay face up before his eyes.
From: The SS and Police Führer, Warsaw District, Special Actions.
Ref. NO: 1 ab/ST/Gr-1607-Journal No. 663/43 SECRET
Re: Large-scale Ghetto Operation
To: Reichführer Der Schutzstaffel