“Andrei, let’s stop this here and now,” Deborah said.
Chris and Gabriela were suddenly trapped in the midst of the flying words of a family feud. They looked helplessly at each other as Andrei sprang to his feet and slammed his napkin down.
“Dr. Bronski started this. Not I. Deborah, I sat with Stephan and talked to him. He does not even know he is a Jew. What happens when he becomes thirteen? Your only son not given a bar mitzvah. I’m glad Momma and Poppa are not alive to see this day.”
Paul Bronski seemed to be delighted in having opened Andrei up. “Deborah and I have been married sixteen years. Isn’t it about time you got onto the idea we wish to live our own lives without consultation from you?”
“Paul, I am Andrei Androfski, the only Jewish officer in my Ulany regiment. But every man knows who I am and what I am.”
“I am Dr. Paul Bronski and they know who I am too. Just a minute, Andrei. I explored your galloping Zionism. It isn’t my way to salvation. It didn’t appeal to me either.”
“And your name didn’t appeal to you either, did it, Paul? Samuel Goldfarb. Son of a Parysowski Place peddler.”
“You are so right, Andrei. Nothing about Parysowski Place appeals to me. Not its poverty or its smells or the weeping and wailing, waiting for the Messiah to come. The Jews are the ones who have caused their own troubles in Poland, and I want to live in my country as an equal, not as an enemy or a stranger.”
“And does that justify your sitting on the council of the Students Union, those dirty little fascists who throw stones through the windows of Jewish booksellers?”
“I didn’t back those actions.”
“Nor did you try to stop them. You know why? Well, I’ll tell you. You follow a coward’s path.”
“How dare you?” Deborah said.
“It is you who is the coward and not I, Andrei, because I have enough courage to say that Judaism means nothing to me and I want no part of it. And you go to your holy-roller Zionist meetings not believing what you hear, looking for false salvation.”
The words rained down on Andrei like blows. Paul had struck a nerve and his foe turned white and trembled and the room grew breathlessly quiet, waiting for that short fuse to sizzle to the bomb. But Andrei spoke in a deliberate, trembling rattle. “You are a fool, Paul Bronski. Being a Jew is not a matter of choice. And one sweet day soon, I fear, it will crash down on you and destroy all your logic and smart talk. God, you’re in for a rude awakening, because you are a Jew, whether you want to be or choose to be—or not.”
“Stop it!” Deborah screamed. “This is my home. You will never do this again if you want to set foot in here, nor will you ever see Stephan or Rachael. Paul is my husband. You will respect him.”
Andrei hung his head. “I—should do something about my temper,” he said softly. “I have caused a scene in front of guests. Why should I care, really, so long as you are happy?”
“I am happy,” Deborah said.
“It is only ... Your words—and your eyes do not march to the same tune.”
Andrei walked from the table quickly.
“Andrei!” Deborah called. “Where are you going?”
“To drink. To drink and drink and drink to Dr. Paul Bronski, the king of the converts!”
Deborah started after him. Gabriela quickly stepped from the table and blocked her way. “Let him go, Deborah,” she said. “He is all wound up like a piece of spring steel from the tension on the border. You know Andrei, he will be here tomorrow with apologies. Let him go.”
The slam of the front door resounded like a cannon shot throughout the house.
“Chris, keep an eye on him, please,” Gabriela said.
Chris nodded and followed without a word.
When Chris was gone, Deborah sank into her chair, ashen-faced.
Paul Bronski, feeling contented as a Cheshire cat, soothed, “Don’t let him hurt you so, dear.”
Deborah looked up through tear-filled eyes. “He knew ... he knew. And that is what hurts. My husband is going away and I wanted to light the candles tonight like a Jewish mother—and Andrei knew.”
And all the cunning of Paul’s traps slammed in on him in an unexpected and stunning defeat and he sagged and walked toward the door.
“Paul!” Deborah ordered sharply. “See Gabriela home.”
“No, that’s all right, Deborah. Let’s you and I have another cup of tea and then I’ll find my rampaging cavalier in an hour or so. And don’t you worry about Andrei—I am the one who loves him. And sometimes, dear Lord, it is almost worth the pain.”
Chapter Six
THE REVOLUTIONARY ACTIVITIES OF Fryderyk Rak had made it increasingly more dangerous for him to live in Poland partitioned between Russia, Germany, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He went into self-imposed exile along with many patriots. In France he established himself as one of the leading hydroelectric engineers in Europe.
After the war, in 1918, when Poland had returned to statehood, Fryderyk Rak returned to Warsaw with his wife and daughters, Regina and Gabriela. The new Poland was filled with urgent needs. A hundred years of occupation had left it in a medieval condition. Hydroelectric projects were given an urgent priority. Fryderyk Rak was one of the few Poles with training and experience to cope with the challenge.
He gained neither great wealth nor fame, but a fair measure of each. His most impressive contribution was the part his firm of engineers played in the building of Gdynia. The Versailles Treaty had given new Poland a route to the sea through the Polish Corridor. The only port at the time was Danzig, a so-called “free city” fraught with political dynamite and largely inhabited by unfriendly Germans. Common sense made the building of a Polish seaport a necessity, and thus Gdynia was created.
In exile, he had become a rabid skiing enthusiast. With the first snow bursts of winter he would pack the Rak family off to the Alps. His doctor warned him there were slopes for thirty-year-olds and slopes for fifty-year-olds, but he indulged in his inbred stubborn Polish pride by defying the advice and finding the most dangerous, swiftest ways to get down the mountainsides. He died at the age of fifty from a heart attack at the bottom of a treacherous run called K-94, aptly nicknamed, “the butcher,” and left behind him a well-endowed widow and her two daughters.
In her bereavement, Madam Rak turned to the comfort of her only close living relative, a brother in Chicago. She came out of her period of mourning well stocked with suitors of Polish descent and saw little reason to return to the old country, never having shared Fryderyk’s passion for it. Regina, the oldest daughter, was a rather plain, rather plump girl who was completely content to marry a nice Polish boy whose family imported Polish hams and become an American housewife with a home in Evanston, within gossiping distance of Mother.
Gabriela, the youngest, was of her father’s breed; independent, stubborn, and self-centered. Fryderyk Rak had been a liberal man and an indulgent father. Her uncle, however, had taken his position as head of the family and protector of his widowed sister and her offspring with complete seriousness. He had brought with him from Poland much of the old-country traditions of family tyrant Gabriela rebelled. Warsaw and life with Father were her happiest memories. She received an impressive education from stern nuns in expensive and exclusive Catholic girls’ schools, where she prayed each night that the Virgin Mother would help her get back to Warsaw.
As soon as she was of legal age and came into her part of the inheritance, she made straight back. Gabriela’s mastery of English, French, German, and Polish and her American education brought her a job with the American Embassy as a teacher. Later she became a nearly indispensable member of the staff and was the only Polish national permitted to work on classified material.