“I don’t understand what you are trying to say.”
“Merely this. We wish to avoid in advance the creation of unnecessary problems.”
“Such as?”
“Well, we don’t solicit your services. It may be impossible to get our men to respond to your leadership. And ... you might feel rather uncomfortable with us.”
“No room for Jews!”
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
“Your army represents the government of Poland. Thirty thousand Jewish soldiers died in Polish uniform during the invasion.” Andrei stopped. He knew his arguments were falling on deaf ears. Roman’s eyes now said, “If it weren’t for the Jews we would not be in this situation.” Oh, they’d have a few Jews all right, Andrei knew. A nice quota system like all the quota systems he’d lived with all his life.
“I’ll make you a counteroffer. I know my way in and out of all sixteen ghettos. Let me organize my own unit of the Home Army.”
Roman turned his back on Andrei. “My dear—er—Jan Kowal. That would only increase the friction. Can’t you see?”
“It is disgusting,” Gabriela snapped.
“No, I should have known.”
“What now?”
“There is no turning back. I am leaving in the morning for Lublin.” Gaby’s face became drawn. Sooner or later Andrei would reach a fearful conclusion. “The Bathyrans there have a good collection of foreign passports and visas. For old times’ sake they will give me one and enough money to travel. I’ll pick up the underground railway. We have sent a number of people out of the country that way. Goes into Germany to Stettin. From Stettin it will be a relatively easy matter to make a deal for a boat to Sweden. From Sweden I’ll get to England, then join the Free Polish Forces. If they refuse me a command, I’ll join the British army.”
Gabriela listened to every word with mounting fear. Andrei stopped his pacing. “Someone in this world must let me fight.”
She nodded. She knew. There would never be peace for him again until he was able to strike back.
“What about us?” she whispered.
“Go to Krakow to the Americans. Thompson is gone, but you still have friends there. They will get you out. We will meet in England, Gaby.”
She bit her finger and brushed the hair back over her shoulder nervously. “I don’t want to be parted from you.”
“We can’t travel together.”
“I’m afraid of it all, Andrei.”
“There is no choice.”
“Andrei, it is such a wild scheme. So many, many things could go wrong. If you leave tomorrow and I never see you again—”
He put his hand over her mouth gently, then wrapped his arms around her in his wonderful way, which he had not done for a very, very long time. “And when we meet in England, do you know the first thing we will do?”
“No.”
“Get married, of course, woman!”
“Andrei, I’m so afraid.”
“Shhh.” He petted her hair and rubbed the back of her neck and she purred and smiled weakly. “I must go into the ghetto. There are a few things in my flat. Nothing of value but sentimental. I should like Rachael and Stephan and Deborah to have them.”
He broke from her and put on his cap. “Strange ... I wanted so badly to see Stephan have his bar mitzvah. Well—no matter now.”
“Hurry back, darling. ...”
The return to the ghetto after his absence was shocking. In the few weeks he had been away the situation had collapsed with fearful speed. With winter coming on, the sight of corpses in the streets was commonplace and the smell of death, the low moan of misery, and the tautness of expectant doom cast a pall of gray in the midday sun.
Andrei shoved his hand into the mail slot in the hope that Rachael’s and Wolf’s armbands would be there. He might be able to speak to them ... say a few words ...
The flat was as he had left it. He looked about. The library. Some to Wolf, some to Stephan to read later—if there would be a later. The trinkets which once had been shined to a dazzling polish and adorned his uniform were tarnished. He threw them with his medals into a box. Stephan would want these.
The records and the player for Rachael.
What else was there? Very little. A Zionist organizer had no time for the accumulation of personal wealth. It was a shame that there were so few bits of tangible evidence of what this shabby room had meant. There had been much happiness here once.
The photograph album. The brown oval-framed pictures of Momma and Poppa. The pictures of his own bar mitzvah. Deborah would want these.
Should he see Alex? Rosy? Susan Geller? He heard Rosy and Susan were married. He really should. Hell, saying good-by is a rotten business. Just skip it. This was no bon voyage.
He sat at the table and wrote a note, which he was certain that Rachael and Wolf would receive, dividing his things and saying farewell.
He blotted and folded it.
The door creaked open and closed. Simon Eden was in the room with him.
“Bad news travels fast,” Andrei said.
“We have had a twenty-four-hour watch here. We hoped you’d come back.”
Andrei didn’t want to get into a discussion with Simon. He wanted nothing to sway his mind, throw him into turmoil, challenge his loyalty, play on his sympathy. He had made his decision.
“I’ve spent my life arguing,” Andrei said quickly. “I don’t want one now.”
Simon Eden was acquainted with the reality of Andrei’s words. Two Jews in a room will give you three opinions. His life had been an endless debate. Minute interpretations. Interpretations of interpretations. The kinds of Zionism, the variations of Judaism. Every man an eminent literary and musical critic. Every man having the personal answer to every problem. Debate ... talk, talk, talk, talk.
“I didn’t come to argue. Just to ask you what you are going to do. My people on the Aryan side tell me you made a contact with Roman. Did he give you a commission in the Home Army?”
“They don’t want anyone but tenth-generation red-blooded Polish Catholics.”
“I could have told you that. Jews in the ranks of the partisans are getting murdered for their boots and guns. And I could have told you the Home Army won’t back Jewish units. Going to make a run for it?”
“I think so.”
“Strange damn thing about us, Andrei. We are a race of individuals like none other. We are savage about our right to seek truth as individuals. We are ridiculous sometimes at the numbers of answers we have to the same problem or how we can confuse a simple issue with conversation.”
“It was the lack of unity that lost us Jerusalem in ancient times,” Andrei said. “It is the same damned thing that will destroy us here.”
Their talk was without anger. Simon was one who was always held in esteem by Andrei for his strength and for his unique ability to hold together a dozen factions of Jews engaged in ideological differences. “You say individualism is a weakness. I agree that it has been, at times. At the same time, it is also our greatest source of strength. The constant search for truth by a single man has been the key to survival.”
“Don’t trick me, Simon. I said I did not want to argue. Now you are trapping me into an argument on my right to argue.”
“Can I say that you have expected too much?”
“I? All I’ve ever wanted to do is—”
“I know damned well what you’ve wanted to do. Did it ever occur to you that we don’t have six hundred thousand Andrei Androfskis in the ghetto? They are just ordinary people clinging to a thread of life. They cling to a magic Kennkarte which allows them to work in slave labor. Some even sell their daughters’ bodies—they beg and plead—”