Mila 18 - Leon Uris [30]
My baby will learn Torah,
Seforim he will write for me,
And a pious Jew he’ll always be.
“Know from where you came.”
Dawn cast an ugly light on Warsaw. Andrei’s heavy eyes blinked at the sharpening outlines of the rooftops. He felt the presence of someone behind him.
“It is very chilly. You’d better come inside,” Gabriela said.
Chapter Eight
Journal Entry
WE ARE WITHIN AN inch of war.
The Polish delegation arrived in Berlin for last-minute talks but are without authority to make direct negotiations. It is the consensus that Hitler doesn’t really want to negotiate. His pact with Russia puts the Soviet army on the shelf for the time being, and no one is under the illusion that France and England are going to do very much if Germany attacks us.
I was finally able to get hold of Andrei. Ana Grinspan came up from Krakow, so we will be able to hold an executive meeting later this morning.
ALEXANDER BRANDEL
Throughout Warsaw bells pealed. They pealed from the towers of large and small churches and the cathedral. They pealed from St. Antoine’s and St. Anne’s and from the Carmelites’ and from Notre Dame and the Dominican and Franciscan churches and St. Casimir’s and the Jesuits’ and from the Holy Cross where Chopin’s heart is kept in a little black box near the altar.
Warsaw is filled with churches, and all their bells pealed. For it was Sunday.
A smattering of white sails billowed on the Vistula River to test out the first brisk late-summer breeze, and bathers and sunners packed the shore of the beach at Praga Park.
The Poniatowski Bridge and the Kierbedzia Bridge buckled with the heavy traffic to and from Praga as relatives exchanged visits.
Beneath the Poniatowski Bridge was the Solec district. And this was filled with the odor of freshly dropped horse dung, as most of the teamsters lived in Solec and stabled their horses in the courtyards alongside their homes.
In the winding steps beneath the bridge in Solec the police investigated the knifing of a well-known whore. However, the usual smuggling, mugging, fencing, prostitution, pickpocketing, gambling, and thieving which made the Solec the Solec had decreased, for most of the whores and hoodlums were in church.
All of Christian Warsaw, two thirds of its population, piously promenaded in and out of church. The day before, Jewish Warsaw, the other third, had piously promenaded in and out of synagogue.
It was a pleasant day, As Gabriela dressed for Mass she could see beyond her balcony into the square and along the Aleja Ujazdowska, where the elegant promenaded. The men cut fastidious figures with their homburgs and canes and spats and pin stripes, and there were the dashing army officers, and women elegant in Paris hats and Paris dresses and fur pieces.
The new rich paraded along Jerusalem Boulevard and the grand Avenue of the Marshals.
The hopeful young lovers and the soldiers of the rank and their girls promenaded up and down New World Street, looking longingly into the barred shop windows.
The visitors from the country flooded the Old Town Square to saturate themselves with Polish lore.
The neither rich nor poor filled the Saxony Gardens. And, since the super-nationalistic marshal, Pilsudski, had died, the crowds were allowed to spill into and examine the wonders of his personal botanical gardens in the Lazienki around his Belvedere Palace.
In the Old Town, boys took photographs of their girls posing on the medieval walls.
And the poor people went to the Krasinski Gardens to look at trees and grass and eat hard-boiled eggs and onions and pull their children out of the lake.
Amid squirting fountains and palaces and church bells, Warsaw promenaded and little girls in knee-length white stockings and bows and pigtails walked before parents who felt rather saintly after their visit to the holy domains and little boys ran after the little girls and pulled their pigtails.
In the middle of the broad sidewalks, life centered about the circular-shaped concrete billboard structures upon which handbills were posted announcing cultural events,