Mila 18 - Leon Uris [4]
Polite laughter for Paul’s overcritical estimation of himself. Although balding and sporting a scholar’s stooped shoulders, Paul Bronski had sharp and handsome features.
“Despite the blunder of the High Command in calling me into the army, I predict that Poland will somehow survive.”
In the back of the auditorium, Dr. Franz Koenig stood motionless, looking into the sea of faces. Bronski’s leaving filled him with an exhilaration he had never known. His long, patient wait was almost over.
“I leave this university both heavy-hearted and joyous. The prospect of war is enormously real and it saddens me. But I am content for the things that we have done here together and I am happy because I leave so many friends.”
Koenig didn’t even hear the rest of it. They would all be dripping tears, he knew. Bronski had that faculty to put a tremor in his throat that never failed to move the recipients of his milky words.
They were all standing now, and unabashed tears flowed down young cheeks and even grizzly old cheeks of professors in a sloppy indulgence of sentiment as they sang school songs and anthems, which sounded like school songs and anthems everywhere.
Look at Bronski! Engulfed by his adoring staff. Shaking hands, slapping backs until the end. The “beloved” Bronski. “The University of Warsaw without Paul Bronski is not the University of Warsaw.” “Your office will remain untouched until you return to us.”
Your office, Koenig thought. Your office, indeed.
Dr. Paul Bronski, the “beloved” Paul Bronski, had finished the last of his instructions, dictated the last of his letters, and dismissed his weeping secretary with an affectionate buss.
He was alone now.
He looked about the room. Paneled walls covered with the symbols of achievement that one would gather as the head of a great medical college. Diplomas and awards and photos of students and classes. A billboard of glory.
He shoved the final batch of papers into his brief case. All that was left was a photo of Deborah and the children on his desk. He slid that into the top drawer and locked it. And he was done.
A soft, almost apologetic knock on the door.
“Come in.”
Dr. Franz Koenig entered. The little gray-haired man with the little gray mustache advanced timidly to the edge of the desk. “We have been together for a long time, Paul. Words fail me.”
Paul Bronski was amused. A magnificently understated phrase ... a lovely play on words. Dr. Koenig was a humorless man who could never believe his sincerity was doubted.
“Franz, I’m going to recommend you fill my office—”
“No one can fill—”
“Nonsense ...”
And more garble ... and another farewell.
Franz Koenig waited in his own office across the hall until Paul left, and then he re-entered. His eyes became fixed on the leather chair behind Bronski’s desk. He walked behind it and touched it Yes, tomorrow he would move in and things would look good from here.
My chair ... dean of medicine! My chair. Bronski gone. Quick-talking, teary-voiced Bronski. Ten years he had waited. The board was blinded by Bronski. They were entranced by the fact they could put a graduate of the university as the dean of medicine for the first time in six decades. That’s why they chose Bronski. A whispering campaign against me because I am a German. They were so eager to make Bronski the dean, they even closed their eyes to the fact that he is a Jew.
Franz went to his own office again and got his homburg and tucked his cane over his arm and walked in his half trot down the long corridor. The students nodded and doffed their caps as he sped by.
He approached the big ornate wrought-iron gates. A knot of students blocked his way. For a moment everyone stood still, then the knot dissolved and he passed through, feeling their eyes on him.
How differently they reacted these days, he thought. No longer the vague indifference. He was a man to be respected, even feared. Fear me? The thought delighted him.
Even his fat nagging Polish wife behaved differently