Mila 18 - Leon Uris [65]
Paul was able to secure a lovely apartment on Sienna Street, which was a mixed district of upper-middle-class professionals and long one of the fashionable streets in Warsaw. Bronski was not truly discomfited by the German occupation. His fortune was intact in Switzerland, beyond German reach, and he had quickly achieved the top status the new society allowed. So long as Chris stayed in Warsaw, it was an easy matter for him to advance Paul money which he was able to import on Swiss News accounts.
Nevertheless, moving day brought a terrible uneasiness in him. Deborah seemed delighted at the idea of leaving Zoliborz to move into a predominantly Jewish area. It was as though their forced identification as Jews gave her some sort of victory. While the boxes and crates were piled high, Paul closed himself in his study because he could not stand another question from the children.
On his desk were armbands his family had to wear from now on. The Germans were so damned thorough, he thought. Their directive called for the armband to be white in color with a blue Star of David no less than three centimeters in height. Paul laughed at the irony of it all and put the armband on, feeling that at least he cheated somewhat by losing the specified arm and having to wear the band on his left arm.
There was a knock on the door and Andrei entered.
“Well, hello, brother-in-law,” Bronski said. “Deborah is about the house somewhere, packing.”
“As a matter of fact, I came to see you, Paul.”
“To gloat over your victory? To tell me how foolish I look wearing a Star of David? To raise your finger and tell me how your ill-fated prediction came to pass—‘Bronski, you are a Jew whether you want to be or not’—or to ask if I gave the Germans a lesson on galloping Zionism, which I abhor, and tried to convince them I wasn’t really a Jew? Dammit all, the most difficult part of having one arm is trying to load and light a pipe—that and buttoning your fly.”
Andrei struck a match and held it over the bowl of Paul’s pipe while he drew in the fire.
“How do you feel, Paul?”
“Fine. I discovered I’m still a hell of a good doctor. Did you ever give directions to a corporal on how to amputate your arm by flashlight? Good trick if I say so myself. You look fine. Mere bullet wounds wouldn’t annoy you.”
“How are Deborah and the children taking this move?”
“Deborah? I think she’s delighted. The Lord is making divine retribution for the years I forced her to be an agnostic. I am going to brush up on my Hebrew, read the Torah nightly, and spend the rest of my life saying, ‘I shall be a good Jew,’ so help me Stawki Street.”
“I came here to ask you if you and I shouldn’t call a truce.”
Paul looked surprised. “You are a gallant winner, sir.”
“No, it’s just that times have grown so serious we don’t have the luxury of battling each other for a point already proven. You’re sitting in the JCA. You know just how bad things are.”
“Oh, no doubt they are bad. It is going to be a rough transition.”
Andrei had his opening. He pressed his point “Are you certain it is only a transition? No one really knows what the Germans are up to or when they will quit.”
Paul looked at Andrei with suspicion. The truce was merely a mask behind which he was operating. “And?” he asked.
“Now that the Jews, the half Jews, the converts, and the unadmitting Jews have been labeled, there is a tremendous need to unify all the loose ends.”
“Go on,” Paul said.
“Paul, we are trying very hard to get a meeting together of every faction of the community, regardless of philosophy, to map out some sort of master policy. You are sitting in one of the key positions. We want to know if you can be counted in.”
“Counted in on what?”
“We can’t stand by idly and let the Germans keep pouring these directives at us and beating up our people in the streets. We must go to them as a single