RACHAEL
Dear Rachael,
I will be frank with you.
I have had offers (not exactly offers) to kiss and play around, but I am not interested. Most of the girls like to neck. I think one or two even will do more (so it is rumored).
I don’t know how you will take this, but I miss you more all the time. I didn’t think I would, but I do. This sounds awful, but I think mostly about those four different times we kissed and held each other. You’ll probably stop writing to me and I won’t blame you.
WOLF
Dear Wolf,
You didn’t write anything bad at all. I wish you were here right now so I could kiss you.
With deepest affection,
RACHAEL
Dear Rachael,
I sure don’t know why anyone would want to kiss me. Especially someone like you, so beautiful. I never said it, but I have always thought so. You are very beautiful.
I look at your picture every chance I get and I memorize your letters. The once or twice they didn’t come in I was pretty miserable.
Candidly speaking, I am pretty certain I am in love with you.
Love,
WOLF
Dear Wolf,
I am not certain what love is, so I can’t be sure. I do know that I have a funny feeling inside me when I think about you and that is almost all the time. I know, too, that it hurts me to be apart. I didn’t know anything could be so painful. I cry at night sometimes. That’s because I’m a girl, I guess.
Isn’t it curious? I liked you very, very much before you left (I wouldn’t want you to think I’d kiss a boy I didn’t like very, very much), but since you’ve been away I guess it must be love or something very close to it.
RACHAEL
Dearest Rachael,
If two people feel the same way about each other and are forced to be apart and nothing was decided upon before they parted, then they find they miss each other more and more all the time, I think an understanding could be reached.
I would like you to be my girl, candidly speaking. I promise I won’t have another girl or fool around until I see you. I wouldn’t impose the same conditions on you except to ask you to promise you will let me know immediately if you feel seriously inclined toward anyone else. Then, when we see each other, we can decide how we really feel.
WOLF
Dearest Wolf,
I think your idea is wonderful, but you can be sure that I am not and won’t be interested in anyone else. The thought of any other boy than you touching me makes me shudder.
Love,
Your girl,
RACHAEL
A great deal of that calm and witty shrewdness that was the mark of Dr. Paul Bronski’s personality had vanished. It seemed as though he was worried all the time. At home he was often irritable and many times he snapped at the children for trifles. Deborah tried hard to compensate by comforting him, but Paul’s burdens were running ahead of her powers to transmit sympathy. As the deputy under the chairman, Boris Presser, Paul had to carry out the German directives, deal directly with both Piotr Warsinski as well as the Orphans and Self-Help Society, and was often the scapegoat for all sides. He got little or no support from Boris Presser, who was a complete robot of conformity.
Deborah waited several days after she and Rachael had had their confidential talk in order to find Paul in a proper restful mood. As they prepared for bed one night, Paul had let it be known by the innuendoes married couples develop that he desired sex. Deborah, as always, prepared to comply. It was in that moment that he seemed a little relaxed as he sat in the big chair near the bed and sipped tea and watched her put up her hair as she sat before the mirror.
As he looked at her he thought it amazing how she managed to keep herself so beautiful. Deborah worked eight, ten, twelve, and often fourteen hours in the orphanage on Niska Street. She had kept up Stephan’s studies and Rachael’s piano and she had been a good and comforting wife. There was not a line in her face, no gray in her hair, no telltale sagging of her body.
Perhaps there was envy on the part of Paul. Once Deborah had been retiring and obedient and passive. Now she seemed the stronger of the two. Paul resented his growing need for her.
Deborah twisted the long black strands of hair into tight curls on her forehead and deftly darted pins into them to hold them in place. Then she picked up the hairbrush and went into her nightly stroking exercise.
“Paul, dear.”
“Yes?”
“I have been thinking that, with both of us gone a good part of the day and conditions as they are, wouldn’t it be nice if Rachael were able to get away for a change of scenery? I could take Stephan along with me to the orphanage. There are dozens of boys his own age and he enjoys it there. ...”
Bronski furrowed his brow. “It would be nice if all of us got a change of scenery. What about your plans for Rachael to debut with the symphony? Besides, this is so much nonsense. There is no place she could go but to another ghetto.”
She watched him in the mirror out of the corner of her eye. “We could send her to the Toporol farm in Wework.”
He put his cup down. “Wework? The damned place is just a front for Zionists. The whole place is staffed by former Bathyrans.”
“But it’s healthy and there are girls her age and she will have a chance to look at trees and flowers and something other than misery.”
“You know the morals of these Zionist children.”
“No, I don’t,” snapped Deborah.
“They’re very loose.”
“Has it occurred to you that Rachael is nearly as old as I was when I met you?”
Bronski paled at the verbal slap. Then his eyes narrowed. “Just a minute. Isn’t that where the Brandel boy is?”
“Yes. And before you say another word, I think he is a fine young man who would be overly aware of not violating her. Besides, it’s something that they will have to work out for themselves whether we like it or not.”
“My, listen to the voice of modern sophistication. Have you become a free-love advocate? Are you going to spend the rest of your life throwing up to me your debauching?”
“Paul, she happens to be in love with the boy. Lord only knows they have little or no chance for a normal life, and I cannot see that it is a sin for her to want to be near him.”
He stood up abruptly. “There are other considerations. The Toporol farms are open only on a technicality. We have no guarantee the Germans won’t take a notion to raid them and ship everyone off to labor. If she is caught out there, I won’t be able to help her.”
Deborah lay down the hairbrush and spun about on the vanity bench. “Is there a guarantee they won’t come in here in the next ten minutes and haul us away? Living itself is a plain and simple day-to-day risk.”
The issue was clear. Paul would continue to retrench, to play it close, cautious. Deborah was willing to let her daughter take the risk to pursue a normal, healthy impulse.
Compromise, Paul, compromise! Caution! She had done everything but call him a coward.
He paced the floor, then spurred into one of his more frequent tantrums. “Dammit! There are nearly six hundred thousand people in this ghetto! I have to find place for four thousand new families by the end of the week! There is no space! People are sleeping in courtyards, alleyways, basements, attics, warehouses, hallways.”
“I don’t see what one has to do with the other.”
“Everything has to do with everything! I’m sick and tired of being chastised by my own wife for trying to protect my family. Isn’t it enough that I let Stephan keep on with this whim of yours to study with Rabbi Solomon? He barely escaped with his life once. Do you know one of those children caught was shot? It could have been your own son. I am still the head of this family, and that girl is not going to Wework.”