“You’re going to have to. Alternative, have Tommy send you to Krakow for a long trip.”
Gabriela shook her head slowly. “I didn’t think anything so simple could be so painful. I want to see him so badly I could burst. I just don’t know what to do.”
“Well, honey, no matter what this Lieutenant Androfski is, one thing is for certain. He is a man.”
Andrei was stretched out on his bed, his feet propped up on the iron bedstead. He stared blankly at the ceiling, ignoring Alexander Brandel, who was fishing through papers at the old round table in the center of the room.
“I am against appointing Brayloff to edit the paper. He is inclined to lean too much toward the Revisionists’ point of view. What do you think, Andrei?”
Andrei grunted.
“Ideally, Ervin Rosenblum would be perfect. However, we can’t pay him what he is earning on the outside. Maybe, if we could use Ervin in an advisory capacity ... I’ll talk to him. Now, Andrei, about the Lodz Chapter—you’re going to have to give their problems your attention right away.” Alexander stopped. “I’m maybe talking to the wall tonight? You haven’t heard a thing I’ve said.”
Andrei spun off the bed, shoved his hands in his pockets, and leaned against the wall. “I heard, I heard.”
“So what do you think?”
“To hell with Brayloff, to hell with Ervin Rosenblum, to hell with the Lodz Chapter. To hell with the whole goddamned Zionist movement!”
“So now that you’ve made your great proclamation, maybe you might tell me what is eating you up. You have been uncivilized for a week.”
“I’ve been thinking. Maybe I’ll stay in the army.”
Alexander Brandel muffled his shock at the pronouncement. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll predict you’ll be the first Jew to become Polish Chief of Staff.”
“I’m not joking, Alex. Here I am, twenty-six years old, and what am I? Fighting for a cause that’s all but hopeless. Putting on a big front all the time ... working the clock out ... living in rooms like this ... Maybe I’m crazy for not taking the one chance I’ll ever have to really be something. I walked today. I walked and I thought. I walked around Stawki Street where I lived when I was a boy, and it scared me a little—maybe that’s where I’ll end up when all this is over. And I walked to the Avenue of the Marshals and Jerusalem Boulevard. That’s where I could be if I set my mind to it.”
“And while you were walking, did you walk along the Square of the Three Crosses and past the American Embassy?”
Andrei turned around angrily.
“Thompson at the Embassy called me up and invited me to lunch today. It seems there is a young lady there almost as miserable as you are.”
“God Almighty! Can’t I even have a broken heart in privacy?”
“Not if you’re Andrei Androfski.”
“I don’t want a lecture about Jewish boys and shikses.”
Alex shrugged. “If a shikse was good enough for Moses, a shikse is good enough for Androfski. I know all the things you are thinking now. Why am I here? Why am I beating my brains out doing this? But if you are able to believe in Zionism the same way some of the priests and nuns believe in Catholicism and the same way the Hassidim believe in Judaism, then you will find the ultimate reward of peace of mind greater than any sacrifice.”
Andrei knew the words came from a man who could have gained great recognition and economic reward had he not chosen the path of Zionism. Somehow, Alex did not seem to be giving anything up. If only he could believe in Zionism like that.
“Andrei, you stand for something to all of us. We love you.”
“So I will lower myself in the eyes of my friends and I will hurt them by taking up with a Catholic girl.”
“I said we love you. The only way you could ever hurt your true friends is by hurting yourself.”
“Do me a favor and go home, Alex.”
Alexander Brandel put all his papers together and stuffed them into his battered brief case. He stuck his cap on his head and wrapped the muffler, which he wore summer or winter, about his neck, and walked to the door.
“Alex!”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry. I’ll—be off duty in a week. I’ll take that trip to Lodz right away. Maybe I should also swing around the country and see the chapters in Lublin and Lemberg.”
“That may be a good idea,” Alex said.
After Alex had left Andrei poured himself a half glass of vodka, downed it in a single swallow, and took up a caged pacing of the confines of the room.
He stopped and wound up his record player. A scratchy sonata struggled its way flatly out of the sound head. He turned off the lights except the one over the table in the center of the room and walked to his books. He took a book of Hayim Nachman Bialik, the prince of poets of Zionism.
“This is the last generation of Jews which will live in bondage and the first which will live in freedom,” Bialik had written. He was in no mood for Bialik. Another book. One filled with fury. Here. John Steinbeck, his favorite author.
IN DUBIOUS BATTLE
Innumerable force of Spirits armed,
That durst dislike his reign, and, me preferring,
His utmost power with adverse power opposed,
In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven
And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?
All is not lost—the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield;
And what is else not to be overcome?
Andrei filled his glass again. Now there is a man who understands, he thought. Steinbeck knows of fighting for lost causes. In dubious battle ... His battle ...
There was a soft, almost imperceptible knock on the door.
“Come in, it’s open.”
Gabriela Rak stood in the doorway. Andrei seized the edge of the table, daring not to move or speak. She walked across the room into the shadow of the books. “I thought I would take a walk north from Jerusalem Boulevard. I am intrigued by these three hundred and fifty thousand people from the Black Continent.” Her fingers ran over the backs of the books. “I see you read in Russian and English as well as Polish. What is this here, this odd script? It must be Yiddish, or Hebrew maybe? A. D. Gordon. They have a volume of A. D. Gordon at the Embassy library. Let me see now. “Physical labor is the basis of human existence ... it is spiritually necessary, and nature is the basis of culture, man’s elevated creation. However, to avoid exploitation, the soil must not be the property of an individual. “How is that for my first lesson in Zionism?”
“What are you doing here?” Andrei croaked.
She leaned against the books and stiffened, her eyes closed and her teeth clenched, and tears fell down her cheeks. “Lieutenant Androfski. I am twenty-three years old. I am not a virgin. My father left me a considerable endowment. What else would you care to know about me?”
Andrei’s hand pawed helplessly around the table. At last his fist smashed down on it “Why don’t you leave me alone?”
“I don’t know what has happened to me and I don’t seem to care. As you can see, I’m throwing myself at your feet I beg you, don’t send me away.”
She turned and wept uncontrollably.
And she felt his hand on her shoulder, and it was gentle. “Gabriela ... Gabriela ...”
From that moment when she was consumed by his great and wonderful power, all the things she had considered important to her way of life ceased to be important.
Gabriela knew with no uncertainty that there had never been nor ever would be again a man like Andrei Androfski. Those things which society and its religions and philosophies and economies had imposed upon them as great barriers came crumbling down. Gabriela had been a selfish woman. She suddenly found herself able to give with a power of giving that she did not realize she possessed.