by Bodie Thoene
“You understand that Poland must make a move of aggression against the Reich. The Poles have so far not cooperated, but we will see it to that they attack a radio station in the border town of Gleiwitz. We have arranged that some political prisoners and some traitorous officers are going to be the Poles for this attack. They are even going to be dressed in Polish uniforms.”
Agent Hess nodded his understanding. “And my role in this little stage play?”
“You are to select the participants and see that they are equipped and in position on the morning of September 1.”
“And may I ask for your guidance in regard to the selection?” requested Hess.
“I believe that you are acquainted with the prison compound near the Polish border crossing where your unfortunate injuries took place. You should make your selections there.”
Hess rose and saluted, then paused. “One additional thought, Reichsführer. May I suggest adding Major von Fritschauer to the list?”
Himmler paused in thought, then agreed. “I will send word that he is needed back here in Berlin. It does not appear that anything useful is to be gained by following him, and most recently he has attempted to hide himself among the Jewish community of Warsaw.” Himmler shook his head sadly that a young officer could have fallen so far.
“Shocking,” agreed Hess, and he saluted again before leaving.
***
Rachel extended her hand shyly to the beautiful woman who had saved Peter Wallich and was even now, according to Peter, being pursued by Nazi agents.
It was like meeting the heroine of a very exciting story in person. Rachel considered the details of the dramatic escape from Vienna, the chance meeting with Adolf Hitler, the long and terrible ride with the Gestapo agent in the rail car! How much more exciting did a story have to be in order for this Lucy Strasburg to really be a heroine? Peter had recited the harrowing tale a hundred times. And now here was the very Lucy!
“Is she Jewish?” asked the old yentas in the soup kitchen.
“She must be.”
“Probably raised in an assimilated family. Ignorant of Jewish ways you can tell.”
“So what? That is what helped her save Peter Wallich! I’d like to see how you would handle meeting the German Führer, God forbid? Oy! Makes my head ache to think about it!”
Thus everyone knew the secret that Lucy Strasburg was really Jewish, even though it did not show. Just like they knew that Captain Samuel Orde was also really secretly Jewish. Peter had not mentioned the part about the baby, which might have caused the yentas to view her with less kindly eyes. That part of the adventure being left out created room for speculation about what a lovely couple Captain Samuel Orde and Lucy Strasburg would make standing together beneath a chuppa! Nu?
All the talk among the women in the soup kitchen made Rachel blush deeply when she finally got to meet Lucy. A real heroine. Oy! And maybe even a little romance in her future as well.
For the moment at least, with the spark of her imagination ignited, Rachel thought about something besides the turmoil that had turned her peaceful existence upside down. Only much later in the night, when she lay on her bed and contemplated the past of such a beautiful woman as Lucy, did it occur to her that Lucy was not in Warsaw because she wanted to be. Like all the rest, she was running, running, running away!
***
“I am in love with her,” Peter blurted out to Lucy, nodding absently at Rachel Lubetkin as she carried yet another stack of pillowcases down to the basement.
Lucy smiled slightly. “Then I envy you both. First love.” She dried the tin bowls as they spoke.
Peter looked miserably at the empty doorway where Rachel had just disappeared. “She hates me. At least I think she does. Just my luck, huh? To fall in love with the prettiest girl in the district, who also happens to be the rabbi’s daughter.”
“She will come around.” Lucy tried to console Peter.
He shook his head in disagreement. “She is already engaged. To a guy from Lodz named Reuven, whom she has never met.”
“Hmmm,” Lucy said with surprise. “They are still doing that sort of thing?”
“And I am not religious. Obviously. But . . . I have spoken with her father.”
“Courageous, Peter.”
“I told him she should leave Poland with us.” He looked at Lucy. “Already Hayedid has sent out ten groups of twelve to go to Yugoslavia. Soon enough they’ll be in Palestine, papers or no papers.”
“And will your Rachel leave her family?” Lucy thought it might be the family of Rachel Lubetkin that tied her to Poland, not this Reuven fellow in Lodz.
“If her father orders her,” Peter said hopefully. “And he might if—” So here came the point.
“Just say it, Peter.”
“All right then. If you use your influence and speak with the captain, then he will speak to the rabbi, and—”
“And your Rachel will go with you to live on a kibbutz.”
“Yes.
Lucy nodded. “I have no influence with the captain,” she said softly. “He is a kind man who has employed me. That is all.”
Peter stared at her in disbelief. “Everyone talks about the way he looks at you.”
Lucy frowned and looked away. She did not want to hear this. She knew how men looked at her. She hoped the captain was not like other men. “It is your imagination.”
Peter took her wet hand in his. “Tell me you will speak with him about Rachel. She is too pretty to stay here.” His eyes were desperate. “And you know what I am talking about. If the Nazis come here . . . Well, there is no use saying they don’t do whatever they want to women, is there?”
His comment had not been intended to hurt Lucy, but it did. “Yes. No use denying it. And I will speak to him about her. Although I think you could get further with him than I can.”
Peter kissed her hand in gratitude and then stumbled clumsily off down the stairs after Rachel.
***
TENS Warsaw acquired the last two-bedroom suite available at the Bristol Hotel. Perhaps they rented the last suite available anywhere in Warsaw. With the enormous influx of Western journalists crowding into the city to follow the shuttling politicians, every hotel was packed, and no one seemed to be checking out.
Alfie knew that this fact was a relief to Captain Orde, because it had settled the issue of where Lucy would be staying.
“Of course you must stay with the TENS staff at the Bristol,” he told Lucy in a very businesslike tone. “Elisha and Jacob will move into my room with me. You may have the other room. You must have the other room until things in Warsaw settle down a bit.”
Alfie knew that the captain did not really believe anything in Warsaw would settle down. As a matter of fact, he had made a tour of the basement of the Bristol Hotel, which had been converted into a bomb shelter. The captain had told Alfie that when the siren blew, he must very quickly put the kitten in his hiding place in the valise and carry it with him down to the basement.
The captain did not say if the siren blows, but when it blows. The people in charge of the bomb shelter would not let a kitten in if they knew it was a kitten. But if they thought it was just a piece of baggage, they would not make a fuss about it. For this reason, Alfie had kept a few extra cans of sardines in Werner’s valise. That way, if they were in the basement shelter a long time, Alfie could feed Werner and maybe Werner would not yowl so loud and upset the other people in the shelter.
All of this had been discussed long before Lucy arrived at the TENS office, and also a long time before Warsaw filled up with so many people. The point was, Jacob explained to Alfie, the captain most likely was very pleased to give up his room to Lucy. He did not seem to want to let her out of his sight.
Jacob was right about that. When Lucy went down to the delicatessen to pick up sandwiches that Captain Orde ordered, the captain paced nervously in the office and stopped at every turn to look out over the street. He muttered, “Shouldn’t let her go.” then he ro
cked back and forth on his toes and looked almost angry.
Jacob nodded at Alfie as if to show how right he was. Alfie shrugged and nodded, then said to the captain, “Why didn’t you go with her?”
At this, the face of Caption Orde brightened. “I’ll just go see what’s keeping her.” Then he dashed out the door.
Jacob looked smug. He put his feet up on the desk. “Don Quixote,” he remarked with a grin. “And he has met his Dulcinea at last.”
Alfie did not understand what Jacob meant, and he did not want to ask because Jacob might think he was a Dummkopf. ”Yes,” Alfie said as though he understood perfectly. This made Jacob look at him with surprise.
Maybe Alfie did not know about Don Quixote, but he could tell easily that the captain was very worried about Lucy Strasburg. Captain Orde would fight for her. He would very much enjoy smashing the face of the man who had hurt Lucy.
“Look at this.” Jacob grinned and took his feet off the desk as Orde and Lucy walked together toward the office. Orde was carrying the paper bags with sandwiches. He was talking to her in a pleasant way. A kindly way. Alfie could not tell what they were talking about, but Lucy Strasburg had the same misty smile she had on her face as when she saw the pictures of her baby.
“The protective instinct of the chivalrous British knight.” Jacob pretended to read a newspaper, but he was watching all the while. “King Arthur and Guinevere,” he said under his breath.
“Yes,” Alfie agreed. He did not understand this either, but it made him very happy to see the way their lonely captain worried about Lucy, who was also a very lonely person. Alfie knew about lonely people. He knew all about that even if he did not understand what Jacob was talking about exactly.
The captain did not talk to Lucy in the same gruff manner in which he discussed things with Jacob and Alfie. That evening at the hotel he told her about the complete safety of the bomb shelter beneath the hotel. He said that the sirens would no doubt blow, but that she must not be frightened by such an event. Even if there were some sort of German aggression against Poland, he told her, she was not to worry. The British Army was pledged to protect and defend, the captain said confidently.
Alfie had heard the captain talk about the way he felt the war would go. Poland would not be able to hold on until England and France came to help. Warsaw might come under siege. If that happened, they would have to get out any way they could.
What Orde told Lucy sounded different from what he had told them. Alfie did not think the captain was lying to her. Maybe he was just putting the best face on what was really a very, very bad future for Poland.
And what did the captain mean when he told Lucy that the British Army was pledged to protect and defend? Alfie figured it out when Werner knocked over Lucy’s water glass at supper. Orde had scooped up the kitten and locked him in the bathroom, then had come back to the table with towels.
“In the British Army we call this mopping-up operations.”
Lucy’s face had gotten very soft as she watched him blot the spill, as if she had never seen a man clean up anything before. It was a very gentle thing to see, Alfie thought. It made him feel good inside. And then he knew that Samuel Orde was her own personal English army to protect and defend.
Maybe later, Alfie decided, he would ask someone about King Arthur and the other fellow, Don Quixote. If they were like the captain and Lucy Strasburg, they must be very good stories.
Alfie hoped they had happy endings.
32
New Orders
Captain Orde was a kind man—perhaps the only really kind man Lucy had ever met. Why then did she fear his look? Why could she not lift her gaze to meet his? Was it because she knew he would see how broken she was inside, and knowing that would give him power over her?
She approached his desk with a neatly typed list of provisions for the Torah school air-raid shelter. He was poring over other lists; names of young men he had slated to slip out of Poland and across the borders of Hungary and Yugoslavia, then on to Palestine. The TENS office of Warsaw was barely a news office. Samuel Orde’s primary mission was to rescue as many young Jewish men as could be saved. Lucy found this amazing. Incomprehensible. So very different from Wolf, whose mission it was to kill the same young men.
She waited for him to finish. He looked up, and she gazed at the corner of his desk rather than chance a look into the depth of his eyes.
“Peter Wallich asked me to speak with you,” she said almost shyly.
“Peter? My future general of Israel? He can’t speak for himself?”
“We are old friends. This is a matter of the heart. A very tender heart, Peter has.”
“A heart you know well, I do not doubt.” He sat back in his squeaking chair and smiled up at her.
She raised her eyes only briefly and let her gaze take in the smile lines at the edge of his sun-browned face. Even his skin, rough and weathered, was different from Wolf’s cool, smooth complexion.
“We were together a long time,” she said briefly, wanting to get past that.
“Yes. He has told me about it.”
She felt her color rise. What had Peter told him? Had he spoken of the way she looked when she carried the baby? The silly songs she had sung as she sat in the chair beside the window and dreamed of holding the little one? Had every vulnerable expression and word been shared with Captain Orde?
“He told me you were someone to be trusted,” Orde added. “Utterly and completely.”
She let her breath out with relief and tried to organize her thoughts. “He had asked me . . . well, it is foolish that he asked me at all, but it is a matter of his personal . . .” She faltered.
“Yes?” Orde thumbed the edge of a sheaf of papers impatiently.
“He is in love, you see.” She lowered her voice, aware that Alfie was looking at her quite openly. “With the rabbi’s daughter. With Rachel Lubetkin.”
“Ah, yes.” Orde seemed amused. “So is every young male in the Zionist Youth brigade. Rachel is a pretty girl.”
“And Peter is concerned about her staying here in Warsaw, you see. There is such danger. Especially for . . . young girls who are pretty.” The words came out like a shrouded confession of her own past, her own involvement with a man who had won her over by making her feel desired. All because she was attractive. But of course her life was nothing like Rachel’s. “You see?” she asked lamely.
Orde hung on her words for a moment. She could feel him looking at her, wondering if being pretty had made her own life hard in some way. Better to be homely than to live as she had lived. But that was not what they were discussing here.
“Peter is anxious to get her out of Warsaw. Is that it?”
“Out of Poland. Yes. To Palestine.”
“I have seen what the Arab gangs do to pretty Jewish girls in Palestine,” Orde said under his breath.
She looked up at him with surprise. “What?”
He waved away the thought. It was nothing he wanted to get into now. The issue was Rachel Lubetkin. Lovely. Innocent. A girl any boy could fall in love with. And here she was with a million other girls just like herself. Some more attractive. Some less. But all of them Jewish and all in the path of a Nazi steamroller that crushed all women and children equally to serve its purpose.
Orde inhaled deeply. “Her father has spoken to me already of his concern. And her grandfather in Jerusalem before that. There are people in London working on getting a passport for her. So, you see—” he smiled and shrugged— “Peter Wallich is not the only one who loves her. The question is whether the girl wants to be loved away from her home here in Warsaw. She is not at all happy with the suggestion, I can tell you. And I don’t imagine she would return Peter’s affection if he tried to get her to leave with the Zionist Youth brigade.”
“I’ll tell him then. Tell him that other ways are being explored to help her leave. He will be relieved.” Lucy backed away, nodded her thanks, and managed to slip back to her desk without ever once having to l
ook the captain full in his face.
Even after she returned to her typing she could feel his thoughtful gaze hot on her back. She did not need to look up to know he was wondering about her. Her shame made her clumsy and slow in her work.
***
After breakfast, Rabbi Aaron Lubetkin announced that he would get out of bed and go see for himself the work being done on the shelter in the basement of the Community Center.
Etta helped him bathe, then made him rest before he dressed. After he dressed in his finest Shabbat clothes, she made him rest again and eat.
Word had gotten out, no doubt through young David and Samuel again, that their father was coming to see the defense efforts, and so in anticipation, the efforts were doubled.
Far beneath the floor of the soup kitchen, salvaged timbers were hoisted in place to reinforce the walls and ceiling of the basement. Outside the structure and within, pillowcases and flour sacks alike now held earth from every flower pot and garden plot in the district.
Menkes the baker recruited a number of refugees who had in faraway lives been bakers themselves. Mounds of golden-crusted loaves grew like heaps of sandbags to defend against hunger in the Quarter should the Nazi threats prove real.
Older men from among the Zionists directed the younger men from the Yeshiva schools. The English Captain Orde moved among them all, indicating which barricade should be strengthened and how best to brace walls and ceilings against shelling. Groups within groups coalesced around him, then scattered in a dozen different directions as others moved in for new orders. Water to be stored. Canned goods. Flashlights or candles. Blankets and bandages. These supplies were gathered and then distributed to the shelters of the Community Center, the Torah school, and a dozen smaller buildings around the district.