Susan closed the door and stood over him. He stumbled to his feet.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner,” Chris said. “I got back from the front and ran into a pile of trouble. You know it’s very difficult for me to get in here.”
Susan was immobile, wordless.
“I tried to get Rosy back.”
“I’m sure you did everything you could,” she said coldly. “It is just as well for him to be in the ghetto. With Ervin’s Jewish nose, the hoodlums would always attack him, even with his fancy immunity papers.”
“Where is he, Susan?”
“We live at Mila 19 with the others.”
Chris grunted. “Lord, I didn’t even bring you a wedding present.”
“It isn’t necessary.”
“Susan, is there anything I can do? Anything you want or need?”
She walked to the glass door which overlooked a sea of cots jammed together holding a hundred typhus-riddled children. Do? “Surely that must be the understatement of all time.”
Her coldness reached him. “Susan, what have I done?”
“Nothing, Chris. There is one thing you can do. It will be a very fine wedding present for me and Ervin. You know what kind of work Ervin does. I beg you not to betray him to the Germans.”
“I am sorry that you feel it necessary to say that to me.”
Susan turned on him. “Please, Mr. de Monti. No lectures about honor and humanity.”
“Rosy is my friend—”
“Horst von Epp is also your friend.”
Chris sank into the chair, shattered.
“I am sorry for the unpleasantries, Chris. These are unpleasant times. When a person is trying to survive he is apt to be rude to an old friend. Now, if you’ll let me go back to work ...”
“I want to see Deborah Bronski.”
“She isn’t here.”
“She is here.”
“She doesn’t want to see you.”
“She is going to have to.”
“I’ll give her your message.”
“Susan, before you go ... You’ve been close friends for many years—”
“We were the only two Jewesses allowed to study in a class of fifty nurses. We clung together for self-preservation.”
“Do you know about—”
“Ervin is my husband. He confides in me.”
“I have a chance to get her and her children out of Poland.”
Susan Geller turned from the door. Her homely face was clearly puzzled. There were many things she did not like about Christopher de Monti. There was something about him that reminded her of a Polish nobleman despite his loyalty to Ervin. The one thing she had no doubt about was his love for Deborah Bronski.
“Can you influence her?”
“I don’t know,” Susan answered. “Strange things happen to people under this pressure. Most people will do anything to survive. Many completely lose their souls, their sense of morality is shattered, they turn to weak masses of jelly. A very few seem to find sources of unbelievable strength. Deborah has become a single symbol of humanity to many dozens of children. I would say that a lesser woman would grab the chance to flee. ...”
“Tell her that I am waiting,” Chris said.
It took all the restraint he owned to contain the overpowering drive to sweep Deborah into his arms. She was thin, and the signs of weariness were in her face. But she was more beautiful than he remembered. Her eyes spoke a compassion that one can gain only through suffering. They stood before each other with lowered heads.
“I have never stopped hungering for you for a minute in all these months,” Chris blurted.
“This is hardly the time or the place for a balcony scene,” she answered stiffly. “I only agreed to see you to avoid an embarrassing argument.”
“All of this great pity you give. Is there none for me? Is there no word of consolation for the hours I’ve stood beneath the bridge praying to get a glimpse of you? Is there no iota of sympathy for all those nights I’ve drunk myself into a stupor from loneliness?”
The hardness flowed out of her. She had been cruel. She sat down and folded her hands in her lap, and they rested like a Mona Lisa’s.
“Listen to me without haste or anger,” Chris pleaded. “I can get you and the children safely out of Poland.”
Deborah blinked her eyes and frowned as though she really did not comprehend what he was saying. She stole a glance at him.
“Do you understand what I am saying?”
“There’s so much work here. Every day we lose two or three or four of our babies.”
“Deborah, your own people encourage escape. It is no sin. You owe the gift of life to your children.”
She became confused; she tried to piece together a line of logic. “My children are strong. We will fight this out as a family. Rachael and I have work ...”
He knelt before her. “Listen to me. I was at the capture of Kiev. Within a week after the German army entered, Special Action Kommandos rounded up nearly thirty-five thousand Jews. They were dragged out of basements and closets and barns. The Ukrainians helped hound them down for an extra ration of meat. Then they were marched to a suburb called Babi-Yar—Grandmother’s Pits. A thousand at a time they were stripped naked—men, women, children. They were lined up at the edge of the pits and shot in the back. Then bayoneted, then covered with lime—then another thousand were marched in. Thirty-three thousand in three days, and the Ukrainians cheered every time the guns went off. An insanity has taken over the Germans.”
Deborah was glassy-eyed with disbelief.
“I saw it with my own eyes!”
“Paul will keep us alive.”
“Paul has brought you to this. He has dishonored himself and sold himself to them so completely, they will never let him out alive.”
“Paul has only done this for us!”
“You don’t believe that yourself. He has done it for Paul. Now, listen. You’re leaving. I’ll have you picked up and forced out beyond your choice before I’d let you die.”
“You’ll never touch me again.”
Chris nodded and stood. “I know that,” he said weakly. “I have already resigned myself to the fact that I will never see you. I know that there can never be a life for us if Paul is left here. That doesn’t matter to me—all I want is for you to live.”
“I can’t leave him,” Deborah said.
“Ask him! I think he will let you and your son and daughter die before he faces this alone here.”
“That’s not true.”
“Ask him!”
Deborah tried to push her way to the door, but Chris grabbed her arms with a vise-like grip. She started a useless resistance. Then she stiffened.
“I’ll haunt you, Deborah. Every day and every night I’m waiting beyond the wall.”
“Let me go!”
“Haven’t we been punished enough? Do you want the death of your children as part of the penance too?”
“Please, Chris,” she begged.
“Tell me you don’t love me and you’re free of me.”
Deborah leaned against him and put her head on his chest and sobbed softly, and his strong arms folded about her gently. “That is my greatest sin,” she cried, “still loving you.”
Chris’s arms were empty. He watched her disappear among the cots in the ward.
Paul dozed in the overstuffed chair. She was sick with worry about him since the Germans closed the Civil Authority and moved their headquarters to the big ghetto at Zamenhof and Gensia, in the former ghetto post office. They would have to move soon, too, she was certain. House by house, the Germans were emptying the little ghetto on the south.
Deborah watched him over the top of her book. Sometimes his mind would go blank in the middle of a sentence and he would stare aimlessly, then try to mumble his way back to reality. He wanted to sleep, only to sleep. He was taking greater doses of pills to block from his mind the torment of the German directives.