They answered in the affirmative.
“How’s the leg, Chris?”
“Going up like a balloon.”
“Painful?”
“Let me suffer in peace.”
A bug bit Wolf under the eye. “How long did you stay here, Andrei?”
“Once for six hours.”
“Holy Mother.”
“Of course I didn’t have such nice company. Don’t lie on the sub-floor. It’s rotted. Pieces may fall down on the street. And reach up and rub your partner’s feet so his blood will circulate.”
Andrei tucked the Schmeisser firmly into the apex of the joist and beam and saw a slit of light at the extreme end of the eaves. By the most difficult of straining and contortion, he could lift his head and put his eye to it.
“By God. Some boards are split. I can see the pavement.” He worked the blade of a pocketknife back and forth between the boards, separating them a half inch. “I can see Mila 19.”
“What’s going on?”
“It’s swarming with Germans. They must be looking for the bunker.”
Wolf and Simon felt Chris writhe as spears of pain lashed up and down his leg. Chris’s leg twitched against Wolf’s face. Simon handed Chris a handkerchief. “Bite on this,” he said.
Luminous eyes peered at the four strangers who had invaded their home. A scraping of claws.
“Rats!”
“Get out of here, you bastards!”
“Oh God, I hate rats,” Wolf moaned.
“You’ll find them quite friendly in a few hours,” Andrei said. “It’s the bats at night that get you.”
Wolf’s skin crawled as he felt the animal dash over his chest and brush up against his face. “Oh God damn it,” he cried, “I hate rats.”
They became silent. The sound of guttural orders bounced off the deserted houses in the street below and echoed up to them. They had found a Jew on Mila Street and were torturing him for the location of the Mila 19 bunker.
Cries of agony below settled them down to adjust to their own discomfort. And then the automatic silence when one breathes only with controlled quiet, for there was movement on the roof above them.
“No Jews down this way, Sergeant!”
“You can never tell where the vermin hide. Post a guard here and one at the opposite end of the roofs.”
“Yes, sir.”
Andrei calculated that the guards were at that point where the roof began its pitch, some fifteen yards away. From their speech, they were Ukrainians.
The beams cut into their bodies, but no one dared change his position. The slightest sound now could give them away.
They muted themselves into a deeper stillness at the sound of noises in the attic under them. A smashing of glass. The sound of hatchets and sledge hammers bursting the walls and doors. The building was undergoing a dismantling for secret hiding places.
Each of them touched his weapon at the same instant for a comfort which did not really exist.
Curses penetrated their tomb from the frustrated, grunting hunters.
Screaming whistles in the street. Another Jew had been located, cringing in a courtyard sewer.
More men were on the roof above them.
Chris’s body convulsed in pain. His eyes rolled back in his head. He clamped his teeth into the cloth in his mouth. Simon was trying to decide whether or not to knock Chris unconscious with the pistol barrel, but at that moment Chris straightened out and was still.
Chris saw his father kneeling at the altar next to the library in their villa outside Rome. So funny to see his father praying. Poppa was a hypocrite! He drank, he gambled, he was a libertine ... he was a Fascist. But Poppa prayed. Poppa told him to learn to pray. I’ve wanted to pray but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t without damning myself.
Oh Mary, Mother of God! Help me! I’m going to scream! My leg! Jesus! Jesus! Help me!
“Have your men smash holes in the roof. Jews hide in the roofs!”
They could feel the vibration of the sledge hammers as they splintered the tiles. The ancient beams rattled under the pounding and shot needles of fear through their bodies. Wolf wept softly to himself. Each new blow brought the enemy closer and closer to the edge of the roof.
All Chris could see was his father’s chapel.
Andrei had no thoughts but of that moment when the hammer would burst through and reveal him. He would fire the gun into their rotten faces.
Simon Eden was calm. It did not matter much any more, Simon thought. His parents, his sister and brother were gone. The years as a Labor Zionist organizer had taught him that when the fountains of idealism ran dry one weighed the odds without emotion and accepted reality. This was the end. Trapped in a coffin with rats and spiders. There had been no sweetheart, really. A marriage ended in failure. To be the wife of a Zionist organizer, one had to be a woman like Sylvia Brandel. There had not even been a sweetheart like Gabriela. He envied Andrei. Simon’s only marriage was to Zionism.
They were coming down the roof with ropes around their waists. Andrei prayed as he held his machine pistol ready, his finger quivering on the trigger. There was only one hope.
Perhaps we are so far out on the edge they won’t come down, he thought.
An hour passed. Then two, then three.
At last the hammering above and below them stopped.
The relief from the tension brought on a new realization of physical agony. Their bodies had been cut to a blissful numbness. Chris mumbled hallucinations. They stretched one by one and shifted their positions slightly and massaged themselves and each other to restore circulation.
They had to be quiet; the Ukrainians were still up there. The terror on the streets was unabated.
Wolf played a chess game in his mind. It was the most magnificent jeweled board one could imagine. The black squares were made of solid gold and the white of ivory, each pawn and piece carved of a different precious gem. Move the pawn ... no, the bishop. He tried to think. Then the board would become muddled and the opponent’s chessmen turned to rats and spiders. Why can’t I keep the board straight? Why? I’ve played blindfolded before! The rats ate his chessmen and he could not move his hands to help them. Stop eating my chessmen! Rachael ... Please don’t let me think of Rachael. I’ll cry if I do.
Andrei licked his lips. Food! Oh, look at it. Deborah, you shouldn’t have cooked so much. You cook just like Momma. The gefilte fish is just right. So tasty.
Andrei sniffed. He came out of his trance slowly. Smoke! The brick chimney next to him was becoming warm. German efficiency. Many fireplaces in the ghetto had false coveys for hiding places. This was countered by burning fires in them so any bricked-up Jews would be smoked out. Their hiding place turned into a stifling furnace. The sweat gushed from their bodies, driving them deeper into agony. Whiffs of smoke slithered into the eaves through the crumbled mortar. Andrei gagged and twisted his head to the slit in the eaves to try to suck in a whiff of pure air.
“The smoke is coming through that one down there!” he could hear someone shout “Mark it off the list.”
Andrei closed his eyes again and dreamed of food.
The high-pitched multi-thousand-cycle cries of bats.
Simon’s dream of cold and wet made him urinate.
Andrei opened his eyes. He could hear the flapping wings and the vibrations. Dream or real? Dream or real? Dream or real? Oh God, I’m hungry. Tiny droplets of light sparkled off and on, off and on. Andrei looked through the slit in the boards. Outside, a glaring, artificial light. He turned over again and watched the sparkling overhead. They were beams of searchlights pushing through cracks in the roof. It must be night. He listened for several moments. He could hear nothing on the roof.
“Simon!” Andrei dared whisper. “Simon!”
“Andrei!”
“Chris!”
“He is unconscious,” Simon said. “He passes out and comes to, passes out and comes to.”