“How wonderful!”
Andrei lifted Stephan from his shoulders as though he were weightless.
“What did you bring me?” Stephan demanded.
“Stephan, shame!” his sister reprimanded.
Andrei winked and stretched his arms out Stephan began fishing through his uncle’s pockets, which had been an unfailing source of booty from his earliest memory. He withdrew a gilded Polish eagle, the insignia whose two spread wings held up the front corner of the Ulany cap.
“Mine?” with apprehension.
“Yours.”
“Wow!” and Stephan was gone to alert the neighborhood that his great Uncle Andrei was home.
“And for my beautiful niece.”
“You spoil them.”
“Do me something.”
The girl’s fingers quickly worked the ribbon open.
“Oh! Oh!” She hugged him and raced to the mirror to fix the pair of ivory combs into thick black hair which was just like her mother’s.
“She’s beautiful,” Andrei said.
“Boys are already starting to look at her.”
“What do you mean! What boys!”
Deborah laughed. “She won’t be a wallflower like her mother.”
Rachael walked to her uncle, whom she adored, and kissed his cheek. “Thank you, Uncle Andrei.”
“My reward, please,” Andrei said, pointing to the piano.
Rachael played her mood. A bubbling étude. Andrei watched a moment, then Deborah took his hand and led him toward the kitchen. He stopped at the door again.
“She plays like an angel—like you used to play.”
Deborah shooed Zoshia, the housekeeper, out and set on some water for tea. Andrei sprawled and loosened his tunic. It smelled good in the kitchen. Deborah had been baking cookies. It was like the old flat on Sliska Street on the day before Sabbath. Deborah took off Andrei’s cap and ran her fingers through the array of curly blond hair.
“My baby brother.”
She set before him a large platter of cookies, which were half finished by the time she poured the tea. He took a long sip. “This is good, this is good. Sergeant Styka brews a lousy tea.”
“How are things on the border, Andrei?”
Andrei shrugged. “How should I know! They don’t consult me. Ask Smigly-Rydz.”
“Be serious.”
“Seriously. I’m home for four days—”
“We’re all worried sick.”
“All right, the German concentrations are very, very heavy. Let me give you an opinion, Deborah. As long as Hitler gets what he wants by bluffing, fine. Well, he isn’t bluffing Poland and he may damned well back down.”
“Paul has been called up.”
Andrei uncrossed his legs. The mention of Paul Bronski struck an obvious note of discord. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said quickly. “I didn’t think—”
“None of us did,” Deborah said. She walked to the sink and began rolling the thin dough for more cookies. “Have you seen Gabriela yet?”
“I came directly here. She is probably still working.”
“Why don’t you two come to dinner tonight?”
“If Brandel doesn’t find me first.”
Try to make it. Christopher de Monti will be over.”
“How is my boy Chris!”
“He has been terribly busy since the crisis. We haven’t seen him for several weeks,” she said, rolling the dough at a furious pace.
Andrei walked up behind his sister, turned her around by the shoulders, and tried to lift her chin so she would look at him. Deborah shook her head and spun away.
“Please don’t dream things up between Chris and me.”
“Just old friends?”
“Just old friends.”
“Does Paul know?”
“There’s nothing to know!”
“Did you raise me for an idiot?”
“Andrei, please ... please, we have enough to worry about these days. And for God’s sake, don’t pick an argument with Paul.”
“Who argues with Paul? He always—”
“I swear, if you two get into another fight—”
Andrei gulped down his tea, stuffed a half dozen cookies into his pocket, and buttoned his tunic.
“Please promise me you’ll get along with Paul tonight. He’s going away. Do it for me.”
Andrei grunted, came up behind Deborah, and gave her a brisk slap on the backside. “See you later,” he said.
Andrei Androfski stretched lazily on a park bench on the edge of the Lazienki Gardens facing the American Embassy. The statue of Frédéric Chopin hovered above him, patronized by the local pigeons, and the Belvedere Palace of the former Marshal Pilsudski was immersed in the greenery behind him. It was a nice place to laze. He engaged in his favorite pastime of undressing the female pedestrians with his eyes. He dug into his pocket and found the last of Deborah’s cookies and munched.
After a while the main door of the Embassy opened. Gabriela Rak came out and walked up the embassy-lined Aleja Ujazdowska. He caught up to her by the time she reached the first intersection. Sensing a masher behind her, Gabriela stepped quickly from the curb.
“Madam,” Andrei said, “would you kindly give me the name of that fortunate young lady who owns the heart of the most dashing officer in the Ulanys?”
She stopped in the middle of the street.
“Andrei? Andrei?” And she spun into his arms. The traffic policeman raised his hand, sending a flood of vehicles swirling around them. They dodged and honked their horns with the irritated understanding one gives to a soldier and his girl kissing in the middle of a street. At last an unpatriotic taxi driver shouted that they were a pair of jackasses and sent them scurrying to the safety of a park bench across the way.
“Oh, Andrei,” she said, and lay her head on his chest. “Oh, Andrei,” and she sniffled.
“If I knew that I was going to make you so sad, I wouldn’t have returned.”
She dried her eyes and purred with contentment. “How long?”
“Four days.”
“Oh, I’m so happy.”
“I almost had to find another woman for myself. I thought you would never get out of the Embassy.”
Gabriela toyed with his large hand, which nearly made two of hers. “I’ve just been in a meeting. We aren’t reopening the American school. All the children have been evacuated to Krakow. Even some of the key personnel are leaving.”
Andrei grumbled something about the traditional cowardice of Americans.
“Let’s not talk about it now,” she said. “We only have ninety-six hours, and look at the time we have already wasted. We can’t go to my place. I had it repainted. It smells terrible. I didn’t know you were coming home.”
“And if we go to my place, Alexander Brandel and the whole damned executive council will be camping at the doorstep.”
“Let’s risk it,” Gabriela said with a low-voiced tremor of want that sent her captain to the curb in search of a droshka.
They drove north past the imposing mansions of the “new rich” on the Avenue of the Marshals. Gabriela snuggled against him, her fingers feeling his face and shoulders.
Andrei’s flat on Leszno Street sat in a middle-class neighborhood that buffered the rich on the south from the wild slums on the north. They climbed the stairs toward his tiny flat, arms about each other. By the time they reached the third-floor landing, Gabriela stopped to catch her breath.
“My next lover has to live on the ground floor,” she said.
Andrei swept her up in his arms and tossed her over a shoulder like a sack of sugar.
“Put me down, you crazy fool!”
He emitted a bloodcurdling cavalry charge and leaped up the final flight of stairs two steps at a time, kicked open his never-locked door, then stood in amazement with Gabriela trying to squirm off his shoulder.
Andrei’s eyes went from corner to corner around the flat. He peeked into the kitchen, then looked around again, wondering if he had invaded the wrong apartment. The place was spotlessly clean. For years he had carefully strewn his books and papers about. His desk was always three inches deep in reports. All the wonderful clutter, all the carefully preserved dust—all of the things that make a man a bachelor—were gone.