Chapter 9

She might have the power to set him in a blaze, but she was impossibly obstinate and exotic, totally wrong for his career and for him. Meantime he owed this dirty slumbering youth thanks for keeping her out of his way. Mayor Starzynski arrived shortly in an old limousine, a thickset moustached man wearing a green knitted vest with his unpressed floppy black suit. His shoes were caked with red mud. He had a flushed, excited, almost happy air, this man at the head of a perishing city, whose broadcasts were doing more than anything else to keep Warsaw fighting. He could hardly be sleeping two hours a night. The whole burden of the city was on him. Everybody from the diplomatic corps to the firemen on the streets and the hospital doctors were bypassing the slovenly municipal bureaucracy and appealing straight to the mayor for their needs. Yet he looked fresh and combative, the hero of the hour, and also the target of all the bitter jokes. The new heavy bombs dropped by the German planes in recent days were 'Starzynski cabbages," the antitank steel spikes were "Starzynski toothpicks." "Who is that?" the mayor said, pointing a fat thumb at the couch. 'Just a boy. Dead to the world. He doesn't understand Polish. I can send him out." 'Never mind, never mind." Starzynski waved both hands high and sat in the chair to which Slote gestured. He rested his thick hands on his knees and blew out a long breath, looked around at the large wellfurnished room, and ran his fingers along the polished desk. "Well. You seem in good condition here. Is there anything we can do for you? Are your people all right?" 'We're fine. We're consumed with admiration for the Varsovians." ? The Germans have a bone in their throat, eh? We drove them back in the north last night. Berlin Radio says it's over. We'll see." The mayor was red with pride. 'Our forces are only twelve miles away this morning from a join-up with the Modlin garrison! Then the world will see something! We'll have a battle line again, not a siege." "That's wonderful news, Your Honor." Slote ran his fingers caressingly over the warm bowl of his pipe, and tried to smile with a gladness he did not feel. 'Yes, but the other news is not so good." The mayor paused, looked Slote in the face, and said dramatically, 'the Russians have marched. The Soviet union invaded our country at dawn. They are pouring over the border by the millions! Their excuse is that they want to protect their nationals in Poland from the Germans. It's a crude disgusting lie, of course, but the Russians never change. They have already taken Tamopol and Baranowicze, and Rowne will fall in an hour, if it hasn't already fallen. We have no forces in the east. We have been sacrificing everything to hold off the Germans inthe west, waiting for the Allies to march. And now the Russians are coming. There is nothing to oppose them between the border and Warsaw." Slote burst out laughing. The mayor stared at him, eyes bulging. "What is the matter, sir? Don't you believe me? I tell you the Russians have pounced on Poland from the rear in her agony. It is a historic treachery. I have a message for your President!" He pulled a paper from his breast pocket, unfolded it, and slapped it on the desk before Slote. 'If you have suggestions on the phrasing they will be welcome, but the highest speed is now a matter of life and death." Slote could scarcely translate mentally the Polish words on the gray official paper. All he could think of was the Soviet tanks and soldiers approaching Warsaw. He could see the crawling machines and the Slavic faces. Perhaps they were coming to claim their part of the evil bargain, nothing more. Perhaps they would engage the Germans in battle and Turn Warsaw into Armageddon. Perhaps they would bring up the famed Russian artillery and help the Germans pulverize the Polish capital twice as fast. This news seemed to him the authentic end of the world, and he was not aware of laughing. He peered at the paper swimming before his eyes. "I understand the situation is extraordinary," he managed to say, surprising himself with his own reasonable glibness, "but a communication from the head of a municipality to a head of government is awkward. An approach from President Moscicki, or Marshal Smidgly-Rydz, somebody in the national government, might prove more fruitful." "But Sir, Our national government has crossed the border into Rumania. They are probably under house arrest by now, and the Germans will have them by the neck before the week is out. There's only Warsaw, but we are unafraid and we are fighting on. We want to know what we an hope for." Slote got hold of himself and scanned the dispatch: familiar, pathetic rhetoric of appeal, like all the messages from Radio Warsaw to France and England during the past weeks. In fact the mayor was talking very much in his broadcasting style. "I'm not sure how fast I can get this out, sir. Lately I've been encountering twelve-hour delays and more via Stock holm." 'I guarantee you immediate transmission. You can send this in plain language. Let the whole world know," the mayor shouted, waving a fist, it that the people of Warsaw are fighting on despite the Russian treachery, and that we are calling on the great American President for a word of hope. If he speaks the Allies will listen. Theyll march before it's too late. The Germans can still be smashed from behind. All their power is in Poland. The Allies can roar to Berlin in two weeks. Let the President only speak, and they will march!" 'We can encode it very rapidly, Your Honor. I think that's more prudent. Well be ready to transmit in half an hour." In a more businesslike tone Starzynsld said, "Call my office, and we wig arrange direct voice communication for you with Stockholm or Berne." He stood up and glanced around the room. "A peaceful oasis. The Luftwaffe respects the American flag. Very wise of them. How soundly the boy sleeps." 'He's exhausted. Mr. Mayor, how about theevacuation of neutrals? Did you discuss that with the Germans yesterday?" 'It was not the moment. They came under a flag of truce to ask for our surrender. General Dzuma wouldn't accept the message. The German officers wouldn't discuss any other subject. They said they would reduce us to rubble!" The mayor's voice rose to broadcasting pitch. "They're dropping leaflets all over the city this morning with the same threat, but where are the 'swarms of airplanes' and the 'hurricanes of shells' they talk about? The Germans are already throwing at us everything they've got. They have nothing to add but words. They've been doing their worst for two weeks, and here we are still! Let President Roosevelt only speak out, and civilization can still see a storic victory on the Vistula." His voice dropped; the exalted glow left his face. "I did mention the problem of the neutrals. Their emissary indicated that something would be worked out soon." The mayor gave Slote a cool look and added, with a smile that twisted his mustache, "We don't expect you to stay on and share our fate." "You understand that we have nineteen women here," Slote said, feeling under the weight of this smile a need to apologize. "Men, women, what's the difference? You're neutral." The mayor held out his hand. 'Tlease send the message. I must broadcast it eventually. I want to give your great President the courtesy of a period for private consideration of his reply." Slote grasped his hand. "We Americans here are awed by the stand of Warsaw, of that I can assure you. We Will never forget it, and when we get home we will tell the story." The mayor seemed moved. "Yes? The Germans are not supermen, you see. Warsaw has already taught that to the world. Some Germans are personally fine people, but as a nation they are swine. It is a matter of deep national immaturity and feelings of inferiority. A very complex question. They have the machines, the railroads, the factories, but we are not afraid of them. All we ask is a chance to keep fighting them." "I will certainly convey that to my government." "We need help. I am going from here to dig a trench." The mayor theatrically showed his blistered palms, and left. Slote scrawled at his desk for several minutes, then summoned a coding clerk. "Byron, wake up!" He shook Byron's shoulder, smearing his hand with brick dust. "Come on, get up. All hell is breaking loose."Byron turned over and opened dull eyes. "The Russians are coming. God knows when they'll be here. They invaded Poland this morning. Go With an elastic movement, Byron came erect and awake. "The Russians? Holy cow. This thing's getting interesting." "Interesting? Byron, look, Warsaw will probably become the no-man'sland between the German and Russian armies. The city can be blown to atoms! Get Natalie and tell her she's to come here and stay here. Working in a belligerent's hospital is damned questionable anyway, and now-" Slote walked to the door, putting a fist holcung the pipe distractedly to his head. 'What a mess. So much to do." Byron yawned and rose. "But what's the rush? How far is the Russian border from here, two or three hundred kilometers? Their army can't possibly get to Warsaw for a week." Slote laughed. It had not occurred to him that the Russian armies needed several days to advance three hundred kilometers, but it was true, and very obvious. He took out his pouch and packed the pipe slowly to calm himself, saying, "Of course, but the point is, this development changes everything. There's never any predicting what the Russians or the Germans will do next. There may be dogfights over Warsaw today. The Germans may decide on half an hour's notice to let the neutrals out of here." "Well, I'll try to get her, but you know Natalie." "Please tell Natalie it's not a message from me," Slote said in a tight ragged tone, his hand on the doorknob, his head pounding, "but an official notice from the United States Government. We can no longer be responsible for the safety of anybody outside the four walls of this building. If we suddenly get packed out of here under a flag of truce-and it can happen any time-and she isn't around, I can't delay five minutes. We'll go, and she'll be the only foreigner left in Warsaw, and if by some freak she survives the bombs and the Nazis she can write a book. Tell her that, will you?" He closed the door hard. By now Byron knew the route to the hospital well. It went through a part of the town which the Germans had been pounding hard. Sooty heaps of rubble pockmarked the way; there were craters in the streets, broken sewer pipes, torn cable conduits, downed telephone poles, uprooted trees, and endless piles of broken glass, masonry, wood, and rubbish. Children played on the heaps and in the ruined buildings. Women were washing clothes in the open, or cooking over pale fires of splintered wood in the bright sunshine. Work gangs were digging in the fallen houses, clearing twisted wires from the street, and shovelling and bulldozing debris. Almost everybody appeared cheerful and matter-of-fact; that was the remarkable thing, though Byron was getting used to it. He passed no funerals or other traces of the dead. Leaping, climbing, laughing in the destroyed houses, the children seemed to be finding war an amusing novelty, and school was evidently out. Here and there black-shawled women sat withbowed heads on chairs or stones. Some bared breasts to sucking babies. Many people with blank faces wandered amid the rubble and stared, or fumbled to find things. No fires were burning. The destruction was capricious. One block would be undamaged; the next half razed, as though an airplane had dumped all its bombs at once. Over jagged slanting half-walls, rooms like stage settings hung in the air, their different wallpapers or paint colorfully and pathetically exposed. Byron saw a broken piano hanging half out of one room. He made his way through the entrance hall of the hospital. Here Warsaw's surprisingly cheerful air gave way to a pitiful and disgusting scene. Wounded people were piled and crowded helter-skelter along the marble floor awaiting help; mostly in rags, all dirty, green-pale, groaning or crying or in a faint, men and women, Poles and Jews, blood-smeared, unbandaged, with clothing ripped, with faces torn open, with arms and legs gashed, with an occasional red stump of limb blown away and terrible white bone showing. The children were piled separately in a big anteroom, where a sad chorus of wailing and screaming rose, mingled with some incongruous laughter. Byron hurried past the open door and down the curving stone staircase, into a long low basement area much warmer than the floor above; here the stink of faultily burning oilstoves was even stronger than the smells of medicine. "Is he crazy?" Natalie exclaimed. "How can I leave? I just came on duty. Look!" She swept her arm around at the women in the jammedtogether beds, moaning and shrieking in Polish, at others sitting up dolefully on beds or low stools, with fat white breasts and brown nipples bared to infants, at the three pallid sweating doctors moving from bed to bed, at the hastening nurses, some in soiled bloodstained white dresses like herself, with hair bound in white cloths, some in dark gray nun's habits. "There are five of us down here and we counted eighty-two women this morning! it's the only maternity ward left in Warsaw now. The Germans bombed out Saint Catherine's last night. They say it was unspeakably horrible, pregnant women running around on fire, newborn babies burning u "The point is, Natalie, with the Russians coming-""I heard you! They're hundreds of miles away, aren't they? Go away, Briny, I have to work." A stoop-shouldered doctor with a big nose, a square red beard, and sad filmed eyes was walking past. He asked Natalie in German what the problem was, and she told him. "Go, by all means go," he said, in an exhausted voice. "Don't be foolish, you must leave with the other Americans. ll the embassy sends for you, you must obey." 'Oh, the embassy! Nobody says we're leaving yet. This young man can come and fetch me in five minutes if they do." 'No, no, that's a risk you can't take. You're not a Pole, you're not supposed to risk your life. And you're Jewish, you're Jewish." The doctor put his hand to her head and pulled off the white cloth. Her loose hair fell thick, curling, dark. 'You must go home." Tears ran out of Natalie's eyes and down her face. 'The woman with the twins ishemorrhaging. Did you see her yet? And the baby with the bad foot-' she gestured jerldly at a bed nearby. They're all on the list. Go back to the embassy right away. Thank You. You've helped us. Have a safe journey." The doctor shuffled away. She turned on Byron. "Leslie Slote is a selfish bastard. He just doesn't want to have me on his mind. One thing less to think about." Suddenly she raised her skirt to her hips. The gesture gave Byron a shocking little thrill, though in point of fact the heavy gray bloomers coming down to her knees were considerably less sexy than the white skirt. She must have gotten those gruesome bloomers from the nuns, he thought. 'Here," she said, pulling a thick wallet from her bloomers and dropping the skirt. "I'll go back to the goddamn embmv. But just in case, I want you to go and find Berel, and give him this. It's all my American money. Will you do that for me?" "Sure." "Tell me, Briny," Natalie said, 'are you still having fun?" He looked around at the noisy, crowded, evil-smelling ward, where the Polish women were helplessly bringing new life into a city which was being dynamited to death by the Germans, going through unpostponable birth pangs with the best care the dying city could give them. "More fun than a barrel of monkeys. Be careful going back to the embassy, win you? There's a big burning church on Franzuski, and they've got the street blocked off. Go around by the museum." 'All right. You'll probably find Berel in that gray building, you know, where the Jewish council works. He's on the food committee or something." "I guess I'll find him." Byron came out in a back alley where two men were loading dead people from the hospital onto a two-wheeled cart, much like the one he had bought to carry the water. Bodies lay on the cobblestones, and one man wearing a red-smeared white oilcloth apron was taking them up one by one in his arms and thrusting them at the other man, who stacked them in the cart-large rigid horrors with open mouths and fixed eyes-like dead fish in a market. The man tossed up the light body of a scrawny old woman, whose gray pubic hair showed through the pink rag still hanging on her. Hurrying down Marshal Pilsudski Boulevard toward the Jewish section he heard the thumping of heavy guns, and nearby explosions like the blasting at a building site. Byron muttered routine curses at the Germans. He had spent a week in Germany after defecting from the University of Florence. They had seemed odd, but no more so than the Italians; foreigners, but human enough, with a boisteroussense of fun and very polite manners. Yet here they were, surrounding the Polish capital, pounding it with explosives and flying steel, breaking the water mains, killing the children, turning living people into stiff glassy-eyed dead stacked garbage to be carted away and disposed of. It was really the most amazing outrage. To call it 'war' was not to make it any more understandable. This peculiar and horrible state of affairs in which he accidentally found himself was nevertheless far colorful and interesting than peace," as Byron remembered it. Deliveringwatertothe(more) United States embassy was the most satisfying thing he had done in his life. He loved the job. He was willing to be killed doing it. But the odds were all with him. This was the novel thing he was finding out. Most of the people in Warsaw were still alive and unhurt and going about their business. The city was far from destroyed or even half-destroyed. As he made his way to Nareiskaya district he passed through many a block of brown three-story houses which stood undamaged, peaceful, and quiet, looking exactly as they had before the German attack. But in the Jewish quarter itself there were no such undamaged blocks. It was one broad smoky ruin. Clearly the Germans were raining extra shells and bombs on this district-a pointless course, since the Jews of Warsaw could not compel the surrender of the city. Such a deluge of fire and explosion concentrated on the city's vitals-power, water, transport, bridges-instead of on the Jews, could break Warsaw much faster. The bombardment of the Nareiskaya was an irrational wastefia assault by a powerful army against sad unarmed paupers. The JUDEN VERB signs Byron had seen on park benches in Germany had been too bizarre to seem real. His bombardment of the Nareiskaya district first drove home to him the queer fact that the Germans really had murder in their hearts for these people. 'Trolley cars lay on their sides, burned out. Swollen dead horses stank in the streets, in clouds of fat black flies that sometimes settled stickily on Byron's hands and face. There were dead cats and dogs, too, and a lot of dead rats scattered in the gutter. He saw only one human body, an old man crumpled in a doorway. He had noticed before how quick the Jews were to remove their dead, and how they treated the corpses with respect, covering the loaded carts with cloths and following them in silent mournful straggles through the streets. But despite the smashing up of the houses, the continuing fires, the smoke, the rubble, this quarter still abounded in eager crowded life. On one corner, outside a ruined schoolhouse, boys in skullcaps sat with their bearded teacher on the sidewalk, chanting over enormous books; some of the boys were not much larger than the books. Kiosks were still festooned with dozens of different newspapers and journals printed in heavy Hebrew lettering. He heard someone in a house practicing on a violin. The vendors of wilted vegetables and spotted stunted fruit, of tinned food and old clothes, stood along the sidewalks or pushed their creakyhandcarts amid crowds of people. Work gangs were clearing rubble from bombed houses off the streets and the sidewalks. There were plenty of hands for the work. Byron wondered at this, for in the past weeks Jewish men and boys-perhaps because they were so recognizable-had seemed to erupt all over Warsaw, digging trenches, fighting fires, repairing mains. One bent old graybeard in skullcap and kaftan, wielding a shovel in a trench, gave a Jewish look to a whole work force. Nevertheless they did appear to be pitching in everywhere. Berel Jastrow was not in the council building. Wandering through crowded, dark, dingy corridors lit only by flickering thick candles, Byron chanced on a man whom he had once seen conferring with Berel, a little, neat, bearded Jew with a glass eye that give him a walleyed stare. Talking a mishmash of German and Yiddish, the man conveyed that Berel was inspecting the community kitchens. Byron set out to hunt him down, and came on him in a huge Romanesque synagogue of gray stone, undamaged except for a broken stone Star of David in a round glassless window. Jastrow stood in a low hot anteroom where people were lined up for a strongng women from tubs on smelling stew ladled out by kerchiefed perspire wood-burning stoves. S. "The Russians!" Berel stroked his beard. "This is definite?" "Your mayor came to the embassy with the new "Let us go outside." They talked out in the street, well away from the food queue. The raggedly dressed people in line stared at them and tried to hear the conversation, even cupping hands to ears. "I must report this to the central committee," Berel said. "it may be good news. Who knows? Suppose the two robbers cut each other's throats? Such things have happened. The Russians could be messengers of He was taken aback when Byron offered him Natalie's wallet. "But what is she thinking?" he said. 'I have money. I have dollars. She may need that herself. She it Out Of Warsaw yet." Byron was embarrassed. It had not occurred to him that Jastrow might He said the Americans be offended, but now the reaction seemed natural. expected to leave Warsaw soon under a flag of truce. -so. we won't see you or Natalie again?" "Probably not." "Ah. Well, if the Germans let all you Americans Out together, she should be safe. She told me an American passport says nothing about religion. Tell her I thank her, and I'll put the money in the food fund. Tell her-Voi-sichtf" A shell whistled down and exploded some distance away, making Byron's ears ache. Berel spoke hurriedly. "So, they are coming back to this neighborhood again. They shell by a system, the Germans. Yesterday was Yom Kippur, and all day the shells fell on us, they never stopped. Now, you will be seeing Arele?" He smiledwryly at Byron's blank look. "Dr. Aaron Jastrow," he said, mimicking English pronunciation. "I guess so." "Tell him," Berel said, "Lekh lekha,". Can you remember that? It's two simple Hebrew words. Lekh lekha." "Lekh lekha," Byron said. "Very good. You're a fine Hebrew student.' "What does it mean?" "Get out." Berel gave a worn white card to Byron. "Now, will you do me a favor? This is a man in New jersey, an importer. He sent a bank draft in August for a large shipment of mushrooms. It came too late. I destroyed the draft, so there's no problem, but-what are you smiling at?" "Well, you have so much to worry about. And yet you think of this." Jastrow shrugged. s is my bu ness. e ans, siTh germ they'll either come in, or they won't. After all, they're not lions and tigers. They're people. They'll take our money So"-he held out 'heY. It'll be a very bad time, but a war always ends. Listen, if the Russians come they'll take our money, too. his hand to Byron-"so, God bless you, and Byron heard the noise of a shell very close, the unmistakable sloppy whir and whistle. It went splintering through the synagogue roof. The stunning explosion came a second or two later, giving him a chance to clap his hands to his ears and fall to the ground. Strangely, it did not blow out the front wall, and this was what saved the people on the line. Fragments of the roof went flying through the air, raining in a clatter on the street and on nearby buildings. Then, even as he and Jastrow stood, they saw the whole lamade of the synagogue come sliding down like a descending curtain, disintegrating as it went with a rumble and a gathering crash. By now the queue of people had run out of danger. White dust boiled up, and through this cloud, is the holy ark untouched see the marble pillars andwchaircvhedthweoobdreeenzedotohinonfed at once, Byron could on the far wall, looking naked and out of place in the pale smoky sunshine. Berel slapped him sharply on the shoulder. "Go, go! Don't stay here. Go now. I have to help." Jewish men and boys were already groping into the new ruin, where many little fires were flickering. Little as He knew of Judaism, Byron understood that they meant to save the scrolls.
"All right, I'm going back to Natalie." '(Good. Thank you, thank you. A safe journey to both of you.Byron left at a trot. The uncovering of the holy ark to the sunshine had shocked him like a piece of powerful music. jogging back through the Jewish quarter of Warsaw, he saw these smashed rows of gray and blown houses, these cobbled streets and dirt alleys, these shabby courtyards and mews hung with drying laundry, these crowds of orderly Jews in bards and broad hats, these dark-eyed cheerful children playing under the bombs, these dogged tired street vendors with their carts and baskets, these kiosks laden with newspapers, magazines, feuilletons, and paperbound books, this smoke-filtered sunshine, these overturned trolleys, these dead horses-he saw all this in superbright detail, each picture printing itself on his mind as though he were a painter. Without surprise or fear, he noticed thick Vs of German planes coming out of the north. The sight had grown ordinary. He continued to trot, a little faster, through the emptying shell-pitted streets toward the embassy. People around him glanced at the sky and took shelter. The first waves were Stukas, diving down and spitting out black smoke, and Byron heard the irritated answering rattle of the weak rooftop machine guns of the Poles. One plane dove toward the street where he was running. He jumped into a doorway. Bullets went chattering down along the cobblestones, with a great whing-whang of ricochets. He watched the plane zoom away, then he trotted on, muttering the usual obscenities about the Germans. Byron was developing a sense of invulnerability to the worst the Germans could He was sure that the United States was going to rise in its wrath in short do. To him they were contemptible bungling butchers. order, cross the Atlantic and knock the hell out of them, if the British and the French really proved too decayed or too scared to do it. The events around him must be making gigantic headlines in America, he thought. He would have been stupefied to know that the Polish war, its outcome clear, was already slipping to the back pages of United States papers, and that people were ignoring even the supposed 'great debate" in the Senate over radifying the Neutrality Act, because of the tight National League pennant race. He loped through the embassy gate very much out of breath. The marine sentry gave him a salute and a familiar grin. Inside, in the big dining room darkened by window braces and blackout curtains, some fifty or so Americans caught in Warsaw were lunching at long trestle tables lit by oil lamps, making a loud clatter. Slote sat with Natalie, a small dark man named Mark Hartley, and some others at the ambassador's polished dining table. Panting from the long run, Byron told Natalie about his meeting with Berel. He did not mention the destroyed synagogue. "'nanks, Briny! God help them all. Sit down and eat something.
We have Marvelous breaded veal cutlets, by some miracle." Slote said, "Did you come here through the streets during this air attack?" 'He has duck feathers for brains," Natalie said, giving Byron an affectionate look. "Byron is all right," Hartley said. He was a fourth at bridge with Natalie, BYron, and Slote, when they whiled away long night hours in the cellar. Mark Hartley's name had once been Marvin Horowitz, and he liked to joke about the change. He was a New Yorker in the importing business. Byron took an empty seat beside Natalie and helped himself to a cutlet. It had a rather gamy, sticky taste, but after a week of canned sprats and Sausages it seemed delicious, and he was famished. He downed it and forked another onto his plate. Slote smiled at him, and glanced around with satisfaction at the Americans happily consuming the cutlets. "By the way, does anybody here object to eating horsemeat?" "I most certainly do," said Natalie. "Well, that's too bad. You've just ten it." Natalie said, "Aagh!" and choked into her napkin. "My god. Horse! I could kill you. Why didn,t you warn me?" "You need nourishment. We all do. There's no telling what's going to become of us, and I had the chance to buy up this lot and I did. You've been dining on one of the great breeds of Poland. The mayor ordered the slaughter of a thousand of them yesterday. We were lucky to get a share." Mark Hartley took another cutlet from the platter. Natalie said, "Mark! How can you? Horse!" He shrugged. 'We got to eat. I've eaten worse meat in kosher restaurants." "Well, I'don't claim t- be re igious, but I draw the line at horses. I'd as soon eat a dog." Byron pushed away his plate. The awareness of horseflesh heavy i. his stomach, the gluey taste of horse in his mouth, the remembered sine Of fly-blown dead horses on the Jewish streets, blended in his consciousness as one thing-war. OUR days later, early in the morning Natalie came scampering out Finto the embassy back yard, hair and skirt flying, and pounced on Byron, who was burning passport blanks and visa application files. The embassy had hundreds of the maroon passport booklets, which went up slowly and smoldly; in German hands they could be used for smuggling spies and saboteurs into the United States. The stacks and stacks of visa requests, because they identified Jews, were also high on the burn-list. Byron had given up riffling through the files for the American currency often clipped to application forms. His job was to reduce the stuff to ashes p as fast as he could; he wasburning money and didn't care. "Hurry. Come with me." Natalie's voice had a cheerfw, excited ring. Where?" "Just come." In a chauffeured black limousine at the front gate, Slote sat next to a plump, pink, gray-headed man. "Hi there, Byron!" Slote too sounded surprisingly cheerful. This is the Swedish ambassador. Byron Henry's father is our naval attache in Berlin, Ambassador. It might be well to take him along, don't you think?" The ambassador rubbed the side of his bulbous nose with a small neat hand, and gave Byron a wise look. "Very much so. Yes indeed. And he should perhaps take notes." "Just what I thought. Hop in, Byron." A blood transfusion could not have changed Slote more. Byron had talked to him an hour earlier; the familiar gray, dour, slumped Slote, who had been glooming around the embassy, taking medicines, snapping short answers, and spending hours locked in his office. Ever since a bomb had fallen on the building next door, killing ten Poles, Slote had been like that. Byron figured the responsibility was wearing the charge down. But now his face had color, his eyes were bright, and the very plume of blue smoke from As Byron go his pipe looked jaunty. t into the back seat, Natalie blurted to the ambassador, "Can I come along? Byron and I are travelling together." With an annoyed grimace, Slote shook his head. The ambassador looked her up and down, with masculin amusement. Natalie wore a green silk dress and an old pink sweater, an atrocious getup pulled from her suitcase without thought. It made her look vulgarly sexy. "Bat, my dear, wouldn't you be frightened?" "Of what?" "The sound of guns. We're going to inspect the safe-conduct exit route." The ambassador's slow British speech was almost perfect. His small pink hand, resting on the open window, was manicured to a gleam, siege or no siege. "We may come rather close to the front." "I've heard guns." The ambassador smiled at Byron. "Well, shall we have your friend along?" He moved to make room for her besid, him as he spoke. Slote said nothing, but gnawed his pipe in an annoyed way. The car started off on a rough, zigzag ride toward the river. Warsa'A, had been crumpling in the past four days. A strong wind was blowing away the smoke, and beautiful morning sunshine gave a mocking peaceful look to the streets. Butsmashed buildings met the eye everywhere. Thousands of windows had been blown out and patched with bright yellow plywood. Warsaw was becoming a place of smoke, broken masonry, and yellow patches. The sidew and gutters were broken and cratered, and spiky tank traps and barricades cluttered main intersections. Glowering nervous soldiers at these intersections stopped the car with raised machine guns, their fingers at the triggers. Few other people were in sight. Far off, cannon drummed and thumped. Each time that a soldier lowered his gun and waved them on, Slote laughed boisterously. "What I find so incredible," he said, as they came to a long stone bridge over the Vistula, crowded with carts, trucks, and bicycles, "is that this thing is still standing at all. Haven)t the Germans been bombarding it for two weeks?" "Well You see, they are just not quite as devastating as they would have us believe," the Swedish ambassador said. "Nor as accurate." The car drove out on the bridge, over the broad brown river serenely flowing between Warsaw and its eastern suburb, Praha, a place of low house' and green woods. Behind them in the sunshine, under a soft smoky blue sky, Warsaw at this distance looked surprisingly unharmed: a broad 'netrOPolis with wide avenues, baroque church domes, tall factory chimneys, and many climbing columns of black smoke. It might almost have, lo C been a manufacturing city on a busy day in peacetime, except r the Yellow fires billowing up here and there, the flashes like summer lightning all around the horizon"and the distant whumping of the artillery. Several busloads of singing and joking soldiers went past the car. Some waved at Natalie and shouted. Many soldiers were heading the same way on bicycles. "Where are they all going?" Natalie said. 'Why, to the front," said the ambassador. ,it's quite a war. They leave their guns and go home for lunch or dinner, or perhaps to sleep with their wives, and then they take a bus to the front again and shoot at the Germans. Madrid was rather like this when I was there during the civil war." 'How far do we go?" Slote said. Here over the river the gun booms from Praha were louder. The ambassador pursed his lips. "I'm not sure. We have to look for a schoolhouse with a stone goose in the front yard, a hundred yards or so past a wayside shrine." On the other side of the river, they found a scene of ruin. Broken houses, burned tree minks, and fallen trees lined the narrow tarred road, which was so torn up by shellfire that the car had to detour time and again on dirt tracks. A camouflaged heavy Polish gun in the woods suddenly went off as the limousine bumped along one of these paths. The driver swerved and brushed a tree, the passengers leaped in their seats. "My God!" Slote said. The car steadied up and drove on through the wooded flat land of Praha. They passed a house with its roof ablaze, and the family outside dolefully watching. Loud explosions went off around them, two or three a minute. Sometimes they saw flames from gunmouths in the woods, though the guns themselves were invisible. Sometimes through the trees they could observe Polish gun crews feverishly moving about. It was all novel and exciting, at least to Byron, and they seemed to be enjoying this wartime sightseeing in perfect safety, despite the unpleasant bumping along grass and dirt to avoid the shell holes. But then a German shell burst near the car, throwing up a geyser of dirt which rattled and tinkled on the limousine roof. owilp Slote said, "Christ Almighty! Were at the front right and "Yes, the schoolhouse must be right past that next curve," the ambassador said. But past the curve they saw only four log houses around a dirt courtyard, where several pigs trotted here and there, bewildered by the gun noise. Beyond, the straight tar road continued into leafy woods and smoke, and visibility ceased. Slote said, 'Please stop the car. The ambassador glanced over his shoulder at him, rubbed his nose with a pink hand, and spoke to the driver. The car pulled to the side of the road. "I didn't in the least understand from you," Slote said, gesturing with the pipe clutched in a fist, "that we were going into the actual zone of fire. Are you sure that we haven't missed a Turn, and that we aren't behind the German lines right now?" The ambassador pushed out his lips. "I don't believe we've come more than three miles from the bridge." Slote burst out laughing, and jerked the pipe at Natalie and Byron. These young people are my responsibility. I can't expose them in this way. Two loads Of soldiers came along in lumbering old street buses with route numbers still displayed in front and faded movie advertisements on their sides. The Idlers were singing, and some waved out of the window at the halted limousine, or gave good-humored yells in Polish. "Clearly we're not yet behind the German lines," said the ambassador. "Nevertheless we'll have to take these civilians back to Warsaw," Slote said. "I'm sorry, you and I misunderstood each other." Natalie exclaimed, "But why? There's no reason on earth to take us back. I'm perfectly all right." "I'm afraid there isn't time." The ambassador deliberately scratched his eyebrow-The cease-fire will probably come within the hour. As soon as we get back, I'll have to start assembling my party." "So will I. But it's up to the Poles and the Germans, after all, to ensure that the neutrals cross the lines safely." The ambassador glanced at his watch.
Colonel Rakowski asked that we come out and view the route ahead of time. I really do think we'd better go on." Two heavy guns went off in the woods-RRUMPH! RRUMPH! -one to the left, one to the right. The chauffeur whirred the ignition. "Just a moment! The driver turned around and looked at Slote, who had gone dead pale, his mouth working. "Ambassador, I must insist that you at least take us back to the bridge first. Perhaps there we can hitch a ride on a truck or bus." "But my dear sir, You should see the route, too. Our parties may get separated later in the woods." A Peculiar feeling knotted Byron's stomach. The ambassador's faultless manners did not obscure what was happening, and Slote represented the United States. He said, "Leslie, I think you're dead right about Natalie. Why not take her into one of those log houses and wait I can go on with the ambassador and get the information if u like. The ambassador at once said cheerfully, "Excellent idea! We can go and return in ten or fifteen minutes, I'm sure." Slote opened the car door and got out. "Come on, Natalie. We'll wait in the one with the green blinds, Ambassador. I saw a woman at the windows." Natalie stayed in her seat, looking from Slote to the ambassador, her mouth pulled down unpleasantly. The ambassador said to her in a stiff European tone, "My dear, please do as you are told." jumping out, she slammed the door and ran toward the house. Slote hurried after her, shouting. The limousine shot forward in a rattle of pebbles. The bare ahead thinned as they drove into it. About half a mile further along they came upon the shrine, a luridly colored wooden Jesus on a gilt cross in a sheltering frame; and not far beyond that was the schoolhouse. Several soldiers, smoking and talking, lounged in front of it around a stone goose bordered with red flowers. Byron thought that if Leslie Slote could have held on only three or four more minutes, he would have been all right. That one bad moment in the limousine, when the dirt hit the roof, had been unlucky for him. Colonel Rakowski hailed the Swedish ambassador with a shout and a hug. He seemed in unrealistically good spirits, Byron thought, and indeed all the staff officers looked too chipper, considering the bad news that shrieked from the military map of the front on the wall: a crude thick red crayon circle, completely ringing Warsaw. On the other walls of the schoolhouse, bright kindergarten pictures hung. Rakowski, an enormous man with pointed blond moustaches, and a big nose empurpled by good living, led the visitors out a back door, and along a leaf-carpeted path to a concrete gun emplacement, where grimy, whiskered men stripped to the waist were piling shells. Motioning the visitors to come on up the colonel climbed the shallow cement slope and mounted the sandbags. Byron followed the ambassador.