The One Man (34 page)

It was Beethoven, hero to the Germans, but whoever had chosen it, it was like a slap in the face to the forces who were in charge.

Blum went closer. The orchestra was set up on a platform near the infirmary on the other side of the wire. No guards around. He fixed on the musician playing the clarinet. A woman. With her shaved head and withered frame, she played as a ghost might play, with a kind of haunting detachment, her head bowed. Yet she seemed to stand apart from all the other performers in her skill.

It was as if there was still some fleeting spark of hope in her that found its way into the music. Even in this darkest of places.

The notes drew him closer, both rousing and familiar, fondly remembering what it was like to hear such beautiful playing. No one stopped him. Most everyone else was in the midst of their meal. Until he stood only a few yards away. Staring up at her. The flow of her fingers on the keys. The precision with which she played. And the feel … Such haunting beauty, and …

Suddenly everything in him came to a stop.

The woman lifted her head, pale, shaven, as if in a trance, and fixed on him.

Her instrument fell to the floor.

Slowly she stood up, her jaw slack. Life breathed back into her face. Their gazes meeting.

“Doleczki,”
Blum whispered, staring at the face he had pictured in his mind a thousand times.

Her eyes filled with tears.
“Nathan,”
she uttered back.

He could not move. His heart stood still. Joy, unbelievable joy flooded every space in him where for these past three years only emptiness had been.

He was staring at his sister.

 

FIFTY

At first, Blum was too filled with shock and disbelief to even speak, terrified that everything in this moment would shatter and it wouldn't be real. A dream.

But it wasn't a dream. She was standing there. Not ten yards away. She had called out his name. All feeling that had been shut off in him these past three years, that had left him thirsting with grief and guilt, now rose like a basin overflowing with cooling water.

Releasing him.

“Leisa!”

They both ran to the wire and locked fingers—grasping, touching, disbelieving, letting the amazement wash over them like a blanket of inexpressible joy.

“Nathan?”
she said, eyes wide. “Am I dreaming?”

“No. You're not,” he said. He squeezed her fingers, touched her face through the gap in the wire. “No more than I!”

It was only as he put his hands on her and squeezed that he could truly admit to himself that it was real.

“Leisa, you're alive!” He stared at her with eyes stretched wider than they had ever been in his life, drinking in the incredible sight. She wore a tattered, waistless rag with holes in it. Her head was shaved. She had sores on her face. Yet he had never seen such a beautiful sight. Tears flooded his eyes. “I was told you were dead. That you had all been killed.” He grasped onto her hand and squeezed, the tears of joy overflowing now.

“Nathan, what are you doing here? You got away. We were told you were in America. That you were safe! How can you possibly be here?”

“Leisa, I—” He wanted to tell her.
I came back. I'm on a mission. I have a way out. Tonight.
But he couldn't, of course. Not here. There were still guards around them. He glanced toward the infirmary. People were going in and out, both prisoners and orderlies. Anyone might overhear. Suddenly it flashed through him that if his sister was here, against all reason, then maybe there was still a chance that somehow they
all
had made it. That what he'd heard was untrue. “Leisa, is there a chance that Mother and Father are…”

“No, Nathan.” She shook her head. “They are dead. They were rounded up as part of a retaliation against a German officer who was killed and put against a wall and executed. Right on the street outside our house.”

“Yes, that is what I heard. But I heard also you!”

“I only got away because I happened to be giving a lesson to Mr. Opensky's daughter when it took place. When I got back, people wouldn't even let me go to our house to see. I was taken in for a month, friend to friend, until finally the entire ghetto was evacuated and I was sent here.”

He held back more tears, his fingers still locked with hers, this time for them. His parents were gentle, civilized people. They loved music, the ballet. They had not an ounce of hate in them, even for their oppressors. So what he'd heard was true. To be left there in the street like homeless dogs. Even worse than criminals.

“I'm sorry, Nathan. There was no way for me to get word out to you.”

“Leisa, I thought you were dead.” Blum's eyes shone. “My world has been a nightmare for two years since the news.”

“And I thought you were safe, Nathan. In America. And yet you are here!” She looked at him again, this time with something verging on anger in her voice. Reproving. “You got out. It was everything Papa wanted for you. How can you possibly be here, Nathan?
How?
”

“Quick, come over here…” They moved farther away from the orchestra, which continued to play. “Come close now. Leisa, I can't tell you,” he said under his breath and with haste, “but you must believe me, I will only be here until tonight. You are in the women's camp? Is there a way through the wire between them?”

“No, that is impossible.” She shook her head. “But what do you mean, ‘only until tonight'? Look at you, you're a prisoner. You are trapped here like any of us. What are you talking about, Nathan?”

He glanced around to make certain no one was eavesdropping on them. The staging area had pretty much emptied. Everyone was back at their blocks now. The guards were at their posts as well. They wouldn't have much time. A woman passed nearby, carrying a stack of sheets to the infirmary. “Listen, can you be here later? Just before dark?”

“Here?”

“In the Main Camp. Near the clock tower.”

“No. Once we finish, there's no access between the camps. If I'm found there, they would shoot me like anyone else. And anyway, come here for what? What are you doing here, Nathan?” Her eyes shook with incomprehension. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“You're in the orchestra. You must have freedoms. What about to the infirmary then?”

“We have our own infirmary back at the camp.”

“Then you must come now.”

“Now…?”
She looked both frightened and perplexed.

“There must be a way through the wire. I will hide you. Leisa, I am only here until tonight. It's our only chance.”

“What are you saying, Nathan? I don't understand.”

“Leisa!”
someone whispered sharply. Another woman in the orchestra gestured worriedly at something beyond them.

Blum looked around. A guard was heading their way.

“Leisa, what block are you in? In the women's camp,” he said quickly.

“Thirteen. But why?”

He tightened on her fingers through the wire and put his lips close to her face. “Leisa, I can get you out of here! I know it sounds crazy, but you have to trust me. That's why I'm here. I have a way. But it is only for tonight. That's why if you can somehow make it in here, whatever you had to do, I could—”

“
Ssshhh,
Nathan!” Her eyes looked beyond him and tremored with alarm.

The guard came up and jolted Blum between his shoulder blades with the stock of his rifle. With a shout, Blum fell to his knees. “No fraternizing, lovebirds. Get wherever you have to go,” he barked at Blum. “And you,” he said to Leisa, “back to the music. Or next time it won't be this end of the gun for you to be concerned about, do you understand?”

“Yes.” Blum nodded, one hand still locked on his sister's.

“We're done, sir,” Leisa said, trembling. “Please, don't shoot. Nathan, we have to go.”

“
Leisa…”
His heart fell like it had plunged into the sea, weighted down with sadness.
We still haven't arranged …

The guard kicked him in the ribs and Blum fell over. “Did you not hear me?
Go!
” He cocked the rifle and pointed it at Blum. “
Go now!
Or do you want me to shoot both of you here?
Now?
”

“No. No!”
Leisa begged the guard. “We're going. Nathan, go! Listen to him.” Tears of grief and helplessness welled in her eyes too.

Blum put his hand out, feeling her fingers slip away from him, possibly for a last time. He couldn't just let her go. Not after three years. After miraculously finding her again. And now with the means to get her out. But there was no way he could do anything with the guard hovering over him. Except look at her as she helplessly backed away from the wire.

Aching, he pulled himself up to his feet.

“Now,
go!
” the German shouted, jabbing at him with the gun. “Go!”

“Nathan,
please…”
Leisa looked at him a last time, begging him. “I have to go back now. I love you. Be safe.”

“I will contact you,” he said, as he staggered away, knowing the guard couldn't understand. “Wait for my word. Tonight.”

The guard pulled back the action of his weapon. “I said enough! This is the last warning!”

Leisa nodded back at him, her eyes flooded and hopeful. She hurried over and rejoined her colleagues on the stand. But Blum knew it was a promise she would never keep.

The woman carrying bedsheets hurried away.

Leisa stepped back up on the stand. The flute player who sat next to her handed her her instrument. She picked up the piece in midpassage and resumed playing. Blum turned once more as he went back across the yard, the guard still behind him, knowing each look he caught of her could well be his last. That he had found her, agonizingly, but only for a few fleeting seconds. And only to lose her once more.

“Lovesick, huh, Jew?” The guard smirked at Blum, nudging him toward the blocks. “Makes me cry.”

“Yes,” he said, holding back his torment. He couldn't just leave her. He wouldn't, no matter what the mission.

Not again.

He turned and caught sight of her a final time, as the orchestra switched to some happier show tune, and saw the sadness pool in her eyes.

You wouldn't leave your flesh and blood, would you?
Mendl had asked of him.

No. He'd already done that once. Never again.

The mission was still everything. Getting Mendl back. The oath he'd made to Strauss. To Roosevelt.

But for Blum, who from across the yard returned Leisa's last, longing look with a nod of promise in his own gaze, the mission had just changed.

 

PART FOUR

 

FIFTY-ONE

The iron door to Block Eleven opened and the large man hesitantly stepped in, his cap in his hand. He took an anxious look around, a row of dark cells lining the barrack walls, hearing people huddled inside them, in total darkness, a few desperate moans. Some iron contraptions that looked like chains or harnesses hung from hooks on the walls.

Franke, against the wall, saw the burly man's eyes fall on them uneasily, as if he understood what they were for.

“Come on in.” Lagerkommandant Ackermann stood up. “Please, sit down.” He pointed to a wooden chair on the other side of the table. “Your name is Macak, correct?”

“Yes, that's me. Macak.”

“Pavel, isn't that right? And I'm told people call you The Bear?”

“Because of my cheery disposition, I guess.” The bearded man forced a smile. He didn't like Germans much to begin with, only their cash, and now, pulled away from his work line by an armed detail and brought here, to this hellhole, a grim-faced guard at the door and two big-shot officers staring at him, even a man as hardened as he could be forgiven for feeling at bit of unease.

“No doubt.” The camp commander grinned. “And you are foreman of one of the construction crews in Brzezinka?”

“That's right.”

“And I've been told you have even done work inside the camp here? Even recently?”

“I have.” The foreman nodded uneasily, a glance toward Franke, who leaned against the wall. “Wherever the work is, that's where we go. Right now, that seems to be you.”

“Even yesterday, if I'm correct,” the Lagerkommandant pressed on. “You and your crew helped construct the new barracks by the kitchens, I'm told?”

“If you're happy with it, yes, that was our work.” The foreman nodded, forcing a smile.

“And the day before that as well?”

“The job took three days.” The foreman shrugged. “We did what was requested.”

“The work is fine, Herr Macak. It just seems there was a minor discrepancy in our count between those who were on the truck in Brzezinka and let inside the gate and then those upon leaving at the end of the day. We counted thirty-one in the morning and somehow only thirty left. I'm sure it was simply a mistake.”

“Thirty, huh…?”
The foreman ran a hand across his beard. “I'm quite sure that's what it was. I'm always accurate with my numbers. Besides…” A moan emanated from a cell behind them. “This isn't exactly the kind of place one wants to get left behind in, if you know what I mean.”

“And why exactly would you say that, Herr Macak?” The Lagerkommandant looked back with a frosty smile.

“No disrespect.” The foreman shrugged. “Only—”

“Yes, I was just joking you, Herr Macak. I understand perfectly what you meant. In fact, our initial thoughts went there too. Why would anyone possibly want to be left behind here? Except then we came across this…” The commandant got up and removed a tan cloth jacket from a hook on the wall and tossed it onto the foreman's lap. “In a storage bin. Near where you and your team happened to be working. Maybe you remember someone wearing it that day. As I recall, it wasn't exactly warm Tuesday. I could understand someone taking it off, perhaps in the heat of the day. But then finding it at the bottom of a storage bin, under rags and buckets … And then coupling it with this matter of this missing person who you say doesn't exist. Number Thirty-One. You know we Germans always need to be precise. So any thoughts on this, Herr Macak? Simply for our records…” The Lagerkommandant's eyes remained on him.