Warsaw Requiem Page 7

  Now the stern, quiet eyes of Fahey pierced through Allan. The man’s expression was different from those of his rough cohorts. Allan knew that here was a leader of men.

  “And a scholar too, I hear?” said Fahey. He extended his hand past the Germans, who stood unmoving between them. Allan took the outstretched hand as if it were offered by a god. He knew Kevin Fahey without introduction. The warm brown eyes were human, humble and real. The red hair was tinged with gray, and the face was no longer young as it had been in the mind of Allan when his mother had recited the endless adventures of this man.

  “I am Allan Farrell, Maureen’s son,” he replied with a half smile. His mother’s name provided his credentials.

  Kevin Fahey frowned into Allan’s face and then cried out, “Sweet Mary! I see the resemblance plainly! I would see her in you if no one had told me you were hers!” He embraced Allan as though he were the prodigal son come home. Fahey’s own emotion touched Allan. Family. This felt so much like the family he no longer had! Tears came to Allan’s eyes in spite of himself. A pang of shame shot through him; then he saw that the others of his blood had shining eyes as well.

  Fahey clapped him hard on the back. “And so she’s come back to us too, in a way. She always said she would. Or that she would send her sons home to a free Ireland. We have yet to see that day. We shall have the priest say Mass for her while you’re here.”

  Allan nodded, not certain he could speak. From the moment his mother had died in New York General, he had been surrounded by men who, like her, had fled their native land for America with the British on their heels. Some said that the IRA was as strong in New York as it was in Belfast. When Allan had raised his eyes from her grave, he had been met with faces of men like his uncle who reminded him it was not finished yet!

  Now, as he stood before his boyhood hero, Allan felt a part of some destiny much greater than his own life. Maureen’s son. Graduate of Johns Hopkins University. B.A. History. Fellow at Georgetown University. On his way to London, where he would complete his doctoral degree.

  All of that had seemed like quite enough until a few weeks ago. And then the call had come. In some small way he was needed for the cause!

  “Well, now that this is settled,” came the thick, dry accent of a German, “we have some business to complete, yes? And then a long way to ride before daylight.”

  Allan saw that they were staring at him. He returned their gazes curiously. Kevin stepped back and leaned against the cracking plaster of the wall. The wind howled behind him.

  “These are the fellows who will be your contacts in London, Allan.” Kevin jerked his head toward the two men who seemed like wax figures compared to the full expressions of the Irishmen in the room.

  “My . . . contacts?” Allan frowned.

  “Much safer for us. There’s not a man among us who won’t be hanged by the end of an English rope if we’re caught in London. You will report to these men.”

  Uncle Colin stepped in. “Another case of strange bedfellows wrought by politics and such, Allan.”

  Allan nodded once. Somehow he had pictured himself within the warm circle of Irish camaraderie. But then, this was a small assignment—a simple matter of nipping at the heels of British John Bull. In London no one would remember or understand the significance of the fact that he was Maureen’s son. He would just be another American.

  “Well, then.” Allan stretched his hands out for warmth again. “What is it I am to do?”

  ***

  Dry clothing. Warm blankets all around. A hot meal for the refugee boys who were not too exhausted from their ordeal to eat.

  Julian’s words had proved true—not one from the little boat had been lost. Three had died in the long overland trek from Czechoslovakia, but twenty-eight had survived to make it here, to the kibbutz in the homeland.

  There was one pleasant surprise when the twenty-eight had been herded into the boys’ barracks. One of their numbers, a thin, aquiline-featured fellow, burst into tears and confessed that he was not a boy at all, but a girl named Rebekah!

  This confession was perhaps the greatest shock of the evening to the band of refugees: Frank is really a seventeen-year-old girl from Prague! She had cut her hair and bound her breasts and joined a group of fugitives in the woods of Bohemia to travel to Eretz-Israel. All this way she had come, and no one had ever suspected! Smaller than the others, she had been bullied and threatened and bossed and punched if she did not move fast enough. Only at the moment she stepped into the barracks and saw the communal showers did she begin to weep.

  Rebekah, moved to the young women’s dormitory, was being pampered and fed as she recited the gruesome tale of fleeing Prague on the very night Hitler arrived to take over Hradcany Castle.

  “And all that was small potatoes compared to getting here undetected in the middle of a gang of boys!”

  Three remorseful members of the fugitive band took their chocolate cake to the women’s dorm and there presented it to Lady Rebekah with their apologies. How relieved they were to find that the one they called Frank was not really a feminine-looking boy. “She is quite pretty, you know. How did we not notice?”

  Orde instantly forgave the fact that this young female had taken up space of a potential soldier for the Special Night Squad. “A girl so clever and brave deserves to be made an honorary member of the Special Night Squad.”

  Rebekah politely declined the honor and laughed at the pale faces of her comrades. “Enough is enough, thank you!’

  Some time after midnight a British military jeep arrived at the gates of the kibbutz and demanded entry. Two British soldiers ordered that any illegal refugees who had come into the kibbutz be brought out to face justice.

  Instead Captain Samuel Orde emerged from his tent to meet with them. Righteous indignation turned into resentment as Orde explained that he had been here all evening. “No one who should not come into the compound has come in—except for you two English intruders.”

  They left sullenly. Two hours later a message came over the wireless that Orde was summoned to Jerusalem to military headquarters. Perhaps it was coincidence; more likely, suspicion of Orde’s protection of the Jewish settlements had finally boiled over.

  “No matter,” he said, returning to his tent. “It can all wait until morning.” He instructed the radio operator to transmit the message that the wire had been garbled.

  ***

  The French village where Murphy and Churchill stopped for the night was still deep within la zone des armée, explained the French captain over dinner. “And yet you see how well we French officers dine.”

  By candlelight in the dining room of the one hotel, Murphy was forced to admit that no other army in the world fed its officers like the French Army. Hors d’oeuvres, salad, salmon, and chicken breast were served with artichokes, and all washed down with le vin-spécialité: Champagne rosé.

  “Keep the menu for a souvenir,” urged the captain. “No matter what happens to France, it will prove to your friends that her officers will always dine like kings.”

  The food was as fine a meal as Murphy had ever had set before him, but he only picked at it. After listening to the speeches of Hitler and the Polish foreign secretary in Warsaw, the sense of foreboding he felt robbed him completely of appetite.

  Bits and pieces of conversation drifted by him. He could think of nothing but his wife and their child. Their children.

  The French captain did not understand either the German language or that of the Poles. He devoured his dinner and drank copious amounts of champagne as he chatted on about the invincibility of the Maginot Line and the strength of one million French soldiers.

  Churchill, like Murphy, had simply tuned this jolly babbler out. Churchill too sat in solemn contemplation of the dark political shadow that had stepped off the wall to lower above them in three-dimensional terror.

  Both Murphy and Churchill declined dessert and coffee. Declaring exhaustion from the long day, they retreated from the too-ch
eerful company of their French guide.

  Churchill’s lower lip extended gloomily as they made their way up the stairs. Only when they were out of earshot of the captain did he speak.

  “When Poland is attacked,” he said, glaring back down the stairs, “the French menu will remain unchanged. They will remain behind their concrete.”

  “And England?” Murphy ventured.

  Churchill raided an eyebrow. “How is Elisa?” He seemed to change the subject. “The baby coming soon?”

  “She’s fine. At the docks tonight helping with refugee children.” Murphy managed a confused smile. “Another two weeks before the baby arrives.”

  Churchill patted him on the back. “When that happens, I would recommend that you send your family promptly to America. The Maginot Line is not long enough or wide enough. The English Channel is not deep enough or high enough. Take them home, Murphy.” He turned as if to go. He had, indeed, answered the question. Two steps farther down the hall he stopped and turned slowly as he reached into his pocket. He took out a small revolver and held it out to Murphy. “You do carry a weapon, do you not?”

  “I left it home. For Elisa.”

  “Here.” Churchill chewed his words like a cigar to be savored. “Take this one tonight. I have another.” Once again he glanced over his shoulder. “In England there are at least twenty thousand organized Nazis. Soon it will be open season on men like you and me. On our beloved families.”

  Murphy took the revolver and suppressed a shudder. “We have a bodyguard living in the flat downstairs—ever since you recommended it.” Murphy hefted the weapon. “Thank you, Winston.”

  “The best bodyguard may well be the Atlantic Ocean,” Churchill remarked as he inserted the key in his door and left Murphy staring after him. The door closed. The latch clicked. A minute later, Murphy could hear the groaning of the chest of drawers being pulled across the floor to rest against the door.

  Never before had Murphy so strongly desired to take Elisa home to Pennsylvania as at that moment. Tonight he followed the example of the British statesman known as the Prophet of Doom. Murphy slept with the revolver beside him and the chest of drawers on guard before the door.

  ***

  Rachel slept in her clothes on the settee in the parlor. She knew that it was morning before she opened her eyes.

  Soft light penetrated her eyelids and the voice of Dr. Tannenberg penetrated her consciousness.

  “Not typhoid,” he said firmly. “No, Rebbitsin Lubetkin, your husband does not have typhoid.”

  Rachel recognized her mother’s sigh of relief. She opened her eyes to see them framed beneath the archway of the foyer. “But what do we do?”

  “Still very serious . . . rheumatic fever can be just as deadly, only it is not in itself contagious. No. You need not worry about the children. It is, you see, from the strep infection your husband had six weeks ago. But some symptoms are much like typhoid—it is no wonder the young prison doctor confused the two. The fever. The jerking. The rash. Nodules and lesions. Perhaps the young fellow even thought he was about to have an epidemic of plague.” The doctor clucked his tongue in sympathy for the prison doctor. “It is definitely rheumatic fever. It attacks the heart valves. Quite deadly, but not contagious.”

  “Please,” Etta exclaimed in exasperation. “What can we do for him?”

  “Just give him the medicine as I told you.”

  “But there must be something else.”

  “No. Just the sulfa drug. It is hard on the kidneys, but it will arrest the heart damage.” He pulled on his coat. “I will be back this afternoon.”

  Rachel watched her mother grasp the doctor’s sleeve. “I . . . I do not want them to know it is not typhoid.” She bit her lip and stared up at him. “If they know it is not contagious, maybe they will take him again, and then he will die in prison.”

  Dr. Tannenberg agreed with a single jerk of his head. “Rebbitsin, I will deceive them in this small matter. But I tell you this, the rabbi may die anyway. There may be other complications. Arthritis. Perhaps an increase in the uncontrolled jerking. But the heart damage is the most severe danger. It may make no difference for your husband if he has only rheumatic fever instead of typhoid or plague—”

  “But it makes a difference to them. They let him come home!”

  “No doubt they are hoping he will infect the entire Jewish Quarter of the city,” he remarked cynically. Then he shrugged. “I will tell no one the nature of the illness. But I cannot make any promises about this recovery, either. You understand? And if it is his time . . .” Another shrug.

  Rachel stared angrily at Dr. Tannenberg from where she lay. She did not like this doctor. She missed the kind gruffness of Dr. Letzno. He would not have shrugged when talking of death, especially not the possible death of Rabbi Aaron Lubetkin. He would have stayed at Papa’s side. He would have administered the medicine himself and made certain that Papa recovered. No, Rachel did not like this doctor.

  Etta accepted the doctor’s words with dignity. “We will pray that my husband may have full recovery. We thank you for your help. For the medicine. And I implore you to say nothing that might dissuade the people and the authorities from thinking the worst. I cannot help but think . . . the symptoms are so close to typhoid . . . perhaps the Lord and Master has sent this other sickness to my Aaron so he could come home.”

  “I cannot pretend to know the mind of God, Rebbitsin. However, if I had a choice between coming down with typhoid or rheumatic fever, I do not know which I would personally rather die from. You see?” He smiled patronizingly and placed his drooping hat on his curly gray hair. “And so . . . I will return this afternoon, yes?”

  On that gloomy thought, the doctor slipped out. Etta stared after him and then closed the door and shuddered from his words.

  Rachel coughed, letting Mama know she was awake. Etta looked at Rachel and spoke to her for the first time since she had ordered her to call the doctor last night.

  “You heard it all?” Etta asked, remaining in the foyer.

  “All of it.” Rachel sat up and smoothed back her hair that tumbled from a disheveled braid. “What about baby Yani? And David and Samuel? Can we all be together?”

  Etta shook her head. She glanced back at the door and frowned thoughtfully. “Our friends will care for the boys. No one must know.” She tossed her head as if she had a plan. “This doctor says he might die anyway, but I tell you, Rachel, we will make him well and pray him well and let the specters of infection and plague stand guard at our door. The goyim will not come here. Not to collect a bill. Not to ask a question. Not to take your father from his bed! Nu! And you and I will nurse him without fear of becoming ill. The doctor says rheumatic fever is not easy to catch.” Mama was almost smiling. Almost! “Let them think there is typhoid in the Lubetkin house! And let them tremble at the thought of having to interrogate a man so ill.” She looked Rachel straight in the eye. “It will all be for the best.” Etta smiled in earnest now. “You will help me, Rachel. We will make him well together.”

  ***

  The black bread in the tin bowl was flecked with spots of mold. Karl Ibsen held a chunk of it up to the light and studied the green spores.

  The sight of them made him smile. He remembered that Jamie had collected two dozen different mold specimens for a science project in school. Was the mold from black bread different from the mold of rye bread? For weeks the boy had cultivated tiny fuzzy jungles in petri dishes beneath his bed. With these microscopic worlds he had terrorized his sister regularly.

  Penicillium blossomed into a wonderfully hairy green bouquet that Jamie placed upon Lori’s pillow just before bedtime. Her screams had no doubt awakened the slumbering dead in the churchyard of New Church. And then there was the fascinating experiment in which several dishes of mold were placed in the icebox among the Christmas puddings and mincemeat pies. This was done, Jamie explained to his angry mother, to see if coldness inhibited the growth of certain specimens. Helen sternly
instructed Jamie to take his entire collection out of the house and into the cold winter night of Berlin. On the back stoop of the parsonage Jamie’s beloved miniature mold gardens met their end. Yes, coldness did indeed inhibit the growth of mold.

  Karl sighed and shook his head in distant amusement. Here it was hot and humid. Maybe that was why all the bread served at Nameless prison was covered with s soft green coat of penicillium. Karl listlessly brushed at it, but it clung tenaciously to the crust. It would not be gotten rid of easily in the warm, moist climate of a Nameless prison cell.

  “I am not hungry, Lord, and yet I know I must eat. To eat is to hope. I will not give up hoping.” He frowned down at the green stuff that sucked nourishment from Karl’s bread. Every day he pretended that perhaps there was some vitamin in this spore that somehow was of benefit to his body. He forced himself to close his eyes and take a bite. “For that which I am about to receive, may the Lord make me truly thankful,” he murmured.

  Chewing on teeth that were sore from malnutrition, he was able to feel warmed by the memory of Jamie and his petri dishes. Wouldn’t the boy have delighted in the giant mold specimen that his father now consumed?

  ***

  The storm clouds over Jerusalem had parted. A bank of thunderheads piled against the distant mountains of Moab, but bright sunlight gleamed down on the clean pink stone of the Old City Wall.

  The air was fresh and cool; the slight breeze carried the light scent of orange blossoms that bloomed in orchards throughout the British Mandate. In spite of the Arab strike, in spite of the violence that had led to the destruction of tens of thousands of the Zionists’ orange trees, the Mufti had failed to uproot them all. And he had failed to uproot the men and women who planted and tended the trees.

  His failure, in large part, was due to the efforts of the British captain, Samuel Orde. In six months Orde had turned the meager defenses of the Jewish settlers into a force to be reckoned with.

  Orde stood at the open window in the office of Colonel Hallum and looked out toward the Temple Mount, where the worst of the riots had begun with the death of Eli Sachar. The ancient pavement was rain-washed, unstained now by the blood of the hundreds who had fallen throughout the winter. The violence had finally receded like the clouds, but there were many dead and broken in its wake. Gazing out over Jerusalem from British headquarters, it seemed impossible to imagine the horrors that had swept across the Holy Land these past few months.