For to her, Andrei was like David of the Bible. He was at one time all that was strong and all that was weak in a single man.
He had within him the power to snuff out a life in an angry fit. Yet there had never been a man who could touch her with such a gentleness.
He was a giant who lived his life for a single ideal. He was a helpless boy who became confused or pouted or angered at a seeming trifle.
He was a symbol of strength to his friends. He would get roaring drunk when the frustrations became too difficult.
But with him there were moments of electric flaring of emotions. There were moments of hurt and pain deeper than any she had known except at the death of her father. There were the great expectations fulfilled with the sensuous thrills of pure physical pleasure.
To her friends it seemed that her willingness to become the mistress of a Jewish pauper was a terrible calamity. For Gabriela, the things she surrendered seemed insignificant and indeed no sacrifice for loving a man who made her happier than she had ever been in her life.
Little by little she divorced herself from the treadmill about which she centered her activities. Gabriela accepted the hard fact that her affair with Andrei might never be resolved in a marriage. She understood that she must never step on the dangerous ground of tampering with his work. She knew he would not be changed over to any of her images. Andrei was Andrei, and she had to take him and everything he was as he was.
Andrei had at last met in Gabriela Rak a woman who could match him fury for fury, passion for passion, anger for anger. She often flared into those stubborn streaks of pride which would be resolved only when he humbled himself or blurted an awkward apology. He sat quietly and took without a whimper the wrath of her anger when he had been out on a binge. He instinctively knew when to back down from a conflict. For his reward he found moments he had never known. Moments when she felt his depression and frustrations over the failures in his work. In those moments she was able to reach him with compassion as he had never been reached before.
He knew he had tamed a wild mare, but one who always kept that streak of rebellion. Gabriela demanded her religious identity. He insisted that she not completely withdraw from all those things which had been her life, and he took many of her friends as his.
And they discovered that they had as many things in common as they once believed had kept them apart. They shared a mutual love of music and books and theater. On occasion he would admit he enjoyed dancing with her.
Gabriela did not strain herself for acceptance among his friends but entered part of his strange world and found those closest to him took to her with sincerity.
His trips around Poland and his leaves from the army always brought him home to days and nights of love-making which never wearied or slackened in intensity.
Only two years ago, Gabriela thought. Only two years since I met my Andrei. She watched from the bridge as the last commuter train left for Praga, then walked north again in pursuit of Andrei and Christopher de Monti.
Chapter Seven
FUKIER’S ANCIENT WINE CELLAR in the Old Town was submerged in noises and smoke and smells. The immense casks leaked age-old wines, which blended with the smells of ales and cheeses. The voices of rowdy bohemians were somewhat buffered by thousands of bottles lining the walls. Amid the uproar, a trio of gypsy musicians inched their way from table to table.
The gypsies stopped and hovered over the table, determined to entertain Andrei and Chris. Andrei emptied his mug, belched, and put a coin on the table. The violinist snatched it and downbeated the accordionist and an unwashed tamborine-rattling female vocalist.
“Jesus Christ,” Christopher de Monti mumbled, “Jesus Christ. Even the gypsies play Chopin.”
“Chopin is a national hero. Chopin gives us courage!”
“Oh balls! He was a tubercular little wart shacked up with a cigar-smoking French whore who cashed in on Polish misery.”
“Is that nice?”
The waitress fought her way to their table, slung down a pair of plates, a loaf of dark rye bread, and a small ham, along with more vodka.
The gypsies played “O Sole Mio.”
“Christ, that’s worse than Chopin,” Chris said.
Andrei gulped down a half pint of vodka and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve.
“Let us not digress from our conversation,” he said. “The Germans attack, we will counterattack, naturally. My steed, Batory, and I will be the first two into Berlin.”
Chris weaved and focused on the ham. He raised his fork, aimed, and plunged it deeply. “This is Poland,” he announced. He picked up a knife and cut the ham in two. “One slice goes to Germany. ’Nother slice goes to Russia. No more Poland. All gone. Andrei, tell them goddamn gypsies to blow. So anyhow, all your goddamn poets will write tired sonnets about the good old days when the noblemen kicked the piss out of the peasants and the peasants kicked the piss out of the Jews. Then! Some half-assed piano player will play benefit concerts to the Poles in Chicago. All Chopin concerts. And in a hundred years everybody will say—Jesus Christ, let’s put Poland back together—we’re sick of hearing Chopin concerts. And in a hundred and two years, the Russians and Germans will start up again.”
Andrei belched again. Chris tried to continue his lecture, but his elbow kept slipping from the table each time he tried to point to Russian Poland. The violin cried. And when a gypsy violin cried in Fukier’s, men cried too. “Chris, my dear friend,” sniffed Andrei, “take my sister away from that no-good bastard Bronski.”
Chris hung his head. “Don’t mention a lady’s name in a bar, sir. Goddamn broad.”
Andrei’s sympathetic hand fell on Christ’s shoulder. “Damned broad,” he agreed.
Andrei emptied, then refilled his mug. “Hitler’s bluffing.”
“Hell he is.”
“He’s scared of our counterattack.”
“Counterattack, my butt.” Chris’s fist struck the table. He spread it clean, shoving bottles and plates and glasses into one corner. “This table is Poland.”
“I thought the ham was Poland.”
“The ham is Poland A. This is Poland B. See the table, stupid? See how nice and flat it is? Perfect for tanks. The Germans have them. They got big ones, little ones, fast ones, heavy ones. Tried and tested in Spain. That General Staff of yours had any sense, they’d pull back now.”
“Pull back!” the Ulan officer cried in horror.
“Pull back, I said. Blunt the first German thrust on the Warta River. Then drop everything in back of the Vistula and make your stand.”
“Back of the Vistula! You dare insinuate we give up Silesia and Warsaw?”
“Hell yes. They’ll take it anyhow. Chopin or no Chopin. If you can hold a Vistula line for three or four months, the British and French will have to start something on the western front.”
“Oh, big strategist, De Monti—big strategist!”
“Just common sense and vodka.”
Gabriela crossed into the cobblestone square of Stare Miasto, the Old Town. It was surrounded on four sides by perfectly preserved five-story medieval houses that formed the showplace of Warsaw. The historical relics of Poland’s glory were preserved in authentic settings. Madam Curie was properly revered in a museum, and shops selling cut glass and national products made it a well-conceived tourist trap as well as a hearthstone of Polish sentiment.
At the far end of the square, Gabriela could hear the noise from Fukier’s. She walked in and looked around.