“What a wonderful experience to be able to communicate with another human being that way.”
She sighed deeply, unevenly, and sipped the drink once more. “Yes, I suppose he knows that I am carrying his child.”
“He should hear it from your lips.”
“No, Father. It’s all part of silent understandings. Andrei returns to the ghetto now, and he will never leave it again. I accept it. I don’t challenge it and I cannot burden him with worry about me.”
“You speak against every concept we hold sacred. You cannot live without hope. That is a sin.”
Her eyes brimmed with sadness. “I know it and he knows I know. But we have never said it and we never shall. My Andrei is a man so full of pride it would be utterly impossible for him to leave so long as there is a bullet to be fired, and when the last bullet is fired he will fight them with his fists. That’s my Andrei, Father.”
The priest patted her hand. “My dear. My poor child.”
She shook off his sympathy and her own self-pity. “Don’t feel sorry for me. I don’t think you understand. I’m deliberately having this baby.”
His expression betrayed the idea that he was immune to shock.
“I planned this with cold-blooded, meticulous calculation. Each time we part there has always been that gnawing fear that this is the last time. But you even harden to that. Now that the end has really come it is almost anti-climactic. This is the last time. I think he was hoping I’d do this, and I think he’s proud of me.”
“Do you realize what you’re doing!” he cried in panic.
“I must have his life in my body. I cannot let Andrei be destroyed. This is the only way to preserve his life. I regret I cannot bear him a hundred children.”
“This is not an act of love. It is an act of vengeance.”
“No, Father. It is an act of survival. I will not let Andrei be destroyed!”
He studied the animal fury in her eyes. She was a savage with the most basic of all instincts. And then he was puzzled. Had the absence of a prescribed ritual made their union less pure? Could a man and a woman cherish each other more deeply, sacrifice, give fidelity, truth, with a greater ability because of a prescribed ritual? Had not Andrei and Gabriela behaved in a manner completely sacred to the eyes of God? He did not like these questions of himself.
Gabriela stood and turned her back to Father Kornelli as the defiance ebbed from her, and her voice was shaky. “I have one terrible regret. I must leave the Church. Andrei’s child must be raised as a Jew.”
He was dazed and hurt, but at the same moment of anger there was admiration for the completeness of her giving. He walked to her. “I cannot condone that and I cannot be your priest,” he whispered. “But I can be your friend and I want you to know that I will help you.”
She nodded and remained rigid, then suddenly spun around and faced him in anguish. “Will I be forgiven?”
“I shall pray for you and your child as I have never prayed before.”
Andrei suspected that Gabriela and Father Kornelli would be immersed in a deep and intimate conversation. When he left Stephan he made sufficient noise upon entering the church to alert them of his presence. He entered the vestry chalky-faced.
“How is Stephan?”
“How? His heart is broken.”
“What is he doing now?”
“He’s trying very hard to be a man, but he’s doing what any fourteen-year-old boy would do. He’s crying himself to sleep.”
“Please know, Andrei, that Gajnow will protect those children. I will personally do everything in my power.”
He patted the priest on the shoulder. “I am very grateful, Father.”
Father Kornelli changed the tone by opening the curtain to the storage closet for his vestments. He took out a bottle of vodka. “Look! I have been saving this for a special occasion. Take it, Andrei.”
“Father ... I couldn’t ...”
“No. Go on. I want you to have it.”
Andrei looked toward Gabriela, who nodded that it was all right.
“You two children look completely done in. Now Count Borslawski’s hunting lodge is vacant and at your disposal. Just a mile into the woods. The horse cart is hitched up. You’ll find a roaring fire in the fireplace and a meal for royalty. Be off! Go on, get out of my sight.”
“By God, Father Kornelli,” Andrei said, “if there were a few more priests like you around, I’d seriously consider becoming a convert!”
Chapter Thirteen
Journal Entry
ALL WEEK DETACHMENTS OF special troops have been arriving in Warsaw from Globocnik’s headquarters in Lublin, the labor camps of Trawniki and Poniatow, and the extermination camps. They are staging in Praga over the river. Oberführer Funk has issued them extra schnapps and promised a mere three to four days’ work in liquidating the ghetto. They have named themselves the Death’s-Head Brigade after Globocnik’s Lublin butchers.
Strange. The two extreme political philosophies in the ghetto have been able to get the closest co-operation on the Aryan side. The Communists and the People’s Guard on the left, the Revisionists and ND Brigade on the right are in close alliance. Unfortunately both undergrounds are small and semi-effectual. We can expect no further help from the Home Army.
The ND Brigade is even discussing trying to get the Revisionists out of the ghetto to form a partisan unit. (It would weaken our forces badly if they left, but they are not under our command.)
The Communists have two trucks in hiding in the Targowek suburb. We have heard rumors of Jewish partisan units forming in the Machalin Forest. The Communists have agreed to transport any people we can slip out of the ghetto to the forest.
We have two short-range transmitters. One is at Mila 18 and the other at the Franciskanska bunker. We only transmit messages in case of emergency. We know that German direction finders are trying to get bearings on our bunkers when we transmit, so we must go through the cumbersome business of taking the radios out of the bunkers and moving them from place to place in order to send messages. As a last-ditch measure we have worked out a series of codes with the People’s Guard, who stand radio watch on the Aryan side. We transmit on a low frequency which can be received by an ordinary radio. Our code tells them the number of people coming through the sewers and through which manhole. Andrei informs me that Gabriela Rak is in contact with the People’s Guard in the hopes she will find places for more children. She stands a radio watch of several hours a day also.
The Germans have dropped barbed wire into the sewers at most of the manholes leading from the ghetto. However, the sewer networks are so vast and tricky, we can bypass the wire. We have also formed a special squad called the “Sewer Rats,” whose duty it is to duck beneath the running sewage and cut the barbed wires in the main sewers.
Jules Schlosberg delivered the land mine to my son Wolf. It took longer than expected to manufacture because Wolf was adamant about wanting to be able to control the detonation. Wolf reasons he can get the maximum number of the enemy this way. It is fixed to be discharged by a spark from a hundred and fifty yards’ distance. The mine is a true curiosity; flat and nearly five feet in diameter. Jules says it has the power of a one-ton bomb, and there are so many nuts and bolts stacked in it that he calls it the “kasha bowl.” I think Jules likens all of his inventions to food simply because he is hungry; the pipe grenade is called “long strudel,” the nut-and-bolt grenade “matzo ball,” and the fire bottles “borscht soup.”