“For a decade we have been preaching a gospel of Jewish cowardice. It is Nazi dogma. What happens if the Reinhard Corps is wiped out tomorrow in the ghetto? How shall we explain it to the world? Shall we say that Jews fight, after all? How would we look to those whom we have impressed as supermen to be forced even to admit that Jews were standing up against us?”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Funk admitted.
“Suppose this defiance in the ghetto lasts a week ... ten days ...”
“Impossible.”
“But suppose it does. It could ignite rebellions all over Poland. ‘See,’ the Poles would say, ‘the Germans have lied to us. Let us take a crack at them too.’ Perhaps the Czechs and the Greeks may like to have a crack at superman hides. You invite insurrection.”
Funk sank to the seat, completely confused now. “Hitler will be out of his mind with rage,” he mumbled.
“Get back to Berlin immediately,” Horst said. “We must put across to them that this liquidation can be completed only if it can be carried out with no further armed conflict. We could invite a dangerous precedent, otherwise. As for this unfortunate incident today, I will say that it was a band of Communists or bandits. You know, minimize it with the usual stories. Then we proceed carefully. We outwit them. We use cunning to lure them out.”
“Very well,” Funk agreed, “very well.”
Andrei’s eyes fluttered open. He was in a bunker cell somewhere. Someone hovered over him. It was Simon.
“My gun!”
“It’s under the cot. No ammunition left mind you, but the gun is there.”
Andrei closed his eyes. He tried to separate the blur of events that all ran together. He remembered seeing Kutler fall in the street parts of the agony in the rafters, snatches of things that might have been dreams or might have happened. Simon fed him a drink of water. Half of it spurted out of his mouth, unable to penetrate the thick dry caking lining his throat. He sipped again.
“What happened?”
“We put on quite a brother act. We make a colorful pair.”
“Where is everyone?”
“Scattered in a half dozen bunkers.”
“Did Alex get away?”
“He’s in the cell across the passage.”
“My sister?”
“At the Franciskanska bunker with the children.”
“Chris ... Wolf ...”
“They are safe.”
Andrei forced himself up on his elbows. He ached all over. He pushed himself to a sitting position on the edge of the cot and was stricken with a spell of dizziness. He lowered his head between his legs to let blood circulate.
Simon moved a small crude table beside the cot and placed a bowl of gruel on it with a hunk of stale bread. It was the first food Andrei had eaten in nearly five days. His stomach growled and his hand trembled as he sloshed the bread in the bowl to soften it. The food was taken slowly, carefully.
“Where am I? At your bunker?”
“Yes.”
“How did I get here?”
“I scraped you off the sidewalk. You fell short in your one-man effort to annihilate the entire German garrison, but not too bad, eleven SS killed, two Ukrainians. You’re the rage of the ghetto.”
Andrei felt his pain-racked body. “Did I get hit?”
“Grazed. The doctor said that normally it wouldn’t have stopped you from playing soccer an hour later, but combined with hunger, exhaustion, and a few other discomforts, you fainted.”
“Fainted? What a ridiculous thing to do. Only women faint.” He mopped the bread around in the bowl more rapidly, cleaned the dish, and licked his fingers. Simon was acting strangely, he thought. His voice rang with bitterness and he was avoiding Andrei’s eyes. Simon never did that. He could win most of his arguments by his penetrating look alone.
“One of our people didn’t make it,” Simon said. He set a familiar notebook on the cot beside Andrei. Andrei recognized it as a volume of the Good Fellowship Club’s study. Simon laid a pair of thick-lensed glasses on top of the book.
“Ervin?”
“Yes. Stray bullet. He lived long enough to tell me where he had hidden this volume. It was the one he was working on. We went to the Mila 19 bunker immediately to find it. Rest of the bunker is destroyed, but we were able to find many hidden things. We salvaged all the arms stores.”
Tears welled up in Andrei’s eyes. “You would think that we would get used to our friends dying after a time. I loved Ervin. Lot of years together.” Andrei bit his lip, but the tears fell anyway. “Quiet, gentle little man. Believed in what he was doing without shouting, breast-beating. He just stayed in the cellar month in and month out, working on the archives. He never said why. He just did it because somebody had to. Ever see how swollen his hands were from the damp? Blind as a bat, but he stayed and kept working after they took Susan. He stayed and went about his business ... never raised his voice.”
The cot groaned as Simon sat beside Andrei. Simon picked the book up, opened it, and turned the pages, then pulled the candle on the table directly to him. “This was his last entry.” He read, “ ‘When will we fight? Or will we fight? Who among us will dare to fire that first shot against them? Who?’ ” He closed it and set it down. He hunched his massive frame forward and rubbed the knuckles of one hand against the palm of the other. “I don’t deserve to be the commander. I want you to take over.”
“No, Simon, no.”
“Don’t humor me, Andrei. I was the man who was planning to send our companies through the sewers to escape. You were the one who fired the shot—and I pointed my pistol at your heart to stop you.”
“Don’t you think I know how torn up you are to have to give an order that will turn us into a suicide force?” Andrei said.
“You don’t understand,” Simon snapped, standing up abruptly with his back to Andrei. “I aimed that pistol at your heart because I was afraid to go down on the street. I was afraid, and I’ll be afraid again.”
“You were afraid, but you went anyhow, and while I was in a blind rage you brought them to safety, because when the moment was needed you were calm and deliberate, as a good commander must be.” Andrei walked up behind him and put his hand on Simon’s shoulder. “I had a lot of time to think while we were up in the rafters. I found answers to many questions. I guess when one is close to his Maker many perplexing problems suddenly become amazingly clear and simple. Who fights what kind of war? The quiet courage it took to be a soldier like Ervin Rosenblum. Simon ... I ... I’m no damned good for anything but leading cavalry charges.”
“Perhaps,” Simon whispered, “if you stuck close by me to knock me flat on my back ...”
“I don’t think it will be necessary again.”
“There were too many mistakes today,” Simon said with a quick surge of excitement. “We have to have scouts in observation posts so that nothing can get into the ghetto before we can move our companies into battle position.”
Andrei nodded in agreement.
“And we have to teach them that the cardinal rule is to pick up enemy weapons and strip their uniforms. We missed on that today.”
Andrei nodded again and smiled slightly at the knowledge that Simon was again in full control and eager.
“I’m thinking. We should find a new bunker close to the central area for a command post.” Simon stopped abruptly, watching Andrei look at the volume of the journal and Ervin’s glasses. “Andrei, what made you go into the streets?”
“I don’t know. Just that this was the moment which could not pass. It wasn’t even seeing my sister. It was Alex. I couldn’t let them take Alexander Brandel to the Umschlagplatz.” Andrei picked up the book. “So damned much time has gone by, and Alex and I have barely talked to each other. I wish I knew how to apologize.”