Gabe - Five.

Gabe

            “Will you come,” I asked quietly, holding the radio receiver on the pillow up to my mouth, “tomorrow night?”

            I rarely asked anything of Erich, over the radio, besides whether he was safe. I was always afraid of saying something wrong, something that would make him go away. But he had to be there tomorrow, when Hersch and Peter gathered the town to tell them about the liquidation. Erich had to be there, to prove that the Nazis were serious and to stand by Hersch whatever he decided to do. Rebecca was praying that Hersch would call up the Resistance, and if he did then we would need Erich to show we had an agent inside the Nazi lines. He had to be there.

            Erich was silent for a long time, but it didn’t bother me. He always took a long time to talk when he radioed, like he was afraid of what he would say. “They don’t want me there,” he said finally.

            “Only Peter,” I replied. “And he just doesn’t see how you can help them.” It was true. I hadn’t been there when Peter heard about the liquidation, but he came back to the butcher shop in a rage in the evening. I didn’t dare go downstairs, but I could hear him throwing things and swearing. I radioed Rebecca to ask what was going on, and she told me Hersch hadn’t decided what to tell the people. Peter didn’t trust Erich, she said. He thought Erich was leading them into a trap, that he was trying to spark a rebellion so the soldiers would have a reason to attack. Rebecca said that Erich had to go to the assembly tomorrow, so Peter could hear it for himself.

            “They won’t listen to me, Gabe,” Erich said, responding more quickly this time. “I’m a solider. You know they’ll never trust me. If they don’t trust me, they don’t need me either.”

            “I need you.” It was the boldest thing I had said to him since I came here. “I’m scared.” My voice sounded small and afraid, and I wished for the hundredth time that he was next to me so I wouldn’t feel so alone.

            Erich sighed heavily, but he didn’t answer. I knew how much I scared him when I said things like that. “Go to sleep, Kamerad.” My heart hurt when I heard the name he used to call me at school. Kamerad. That was the only way Erich could tell me how he felt, the only way he ever let me know that I still meant something to him. His comrade.

            “Please come,” I said one last time.

            “Goodnight, Gabe.”

…

            I hadn’t been asleep for more than a few hours before someone shook me awake. It was still pitch black in my room and I started awake, terrified, and flailed blindly in the direction of the intruder. I hit something solid and heard Jim swear under his breath, “Goddamn it, Moretti, what’d you do that for?”

            “What are you doing here?” I slurred, rubbing my eyes. I was exhausted; I had only slept a few hours since Rebecca woke me up at dawn the morning before. For the first time, Erich had turned off his radio before I was asleep. I had stayed awake, staring at the ceiling, petrified to think about what the next few days would bring.

            Rebecca’s voice came from the foot of my bed, “Peter has everyone gathered in the Underground headquarters.”

            “Already?” That was supposed to be tomorrow night. How could Hersch have made a decision already?

            “The word travelled fast, and there is no time to lose if liquidation is coming,” Rebecca said quickly, pulling my blankets off to rush me along. I shoved my feet into my shoes and grabbed my coat off the bedpost, not wanting to slow them down. “Herschel went ahead. They will be starting soon.”

            She grabbed my wrist and we dashed down the stairs, Jim loping behind us. I was the only one who had seen what his legs looked like after the explosion, and I was amazed he could run at all. “Does Erich know?” I asked as we descended into the tunnel.

            Jim and Rebecca exchange a glance, like they knew I would ask that question. “We radioed him,” Jim began, “but he was on shift. He couldn’t answer us. He knows that it’s happening tonight but we don’t know if he’s coming.”

            “You told him where the Underground headquarters are?” Peter would be furious.

            “Rebecca did,” Jim muttered. “I’m not getting murdered by Berezovsky on Amery’s account.”

            I kept a firm grip on Rebecca’s hand as we dashed through the dark tunnel. Jim’s small torch, “flashlight,” he kept calling it, hardly made a dent in the total blackness of the tunnel, and I imagined that if I had gone down there alone I never would have come out. I cringed at the sound of rats’ feet on the damp floor. Rebecca led us up the ladder to the glasses shop, where Hersch had taken me on the first day, but Jim and I were both surprised when we stopped there.

            “Where now? I thought you couldn’t get to the Underground without going through your parents’ shop?” Jim asked, bending over to massage his audibly creaking knees.

            “You can’t,” Rebecca replied. “Hand me the light.” Jim passed it over. She shone the light on the ground behind the counter, then dropped to her knees, feeling around on the dingy wooden floor. Jim and I observed her cautiously, wondering if she really had lost her mind. She found a knot in the wood and grabbed it, extending her arms to push back what was now clearly a door in the floor not unlike the one in Hersch’s room. A rumbling came from under us; there were people down there, lots of people. Underground headquarters.

            “Wow,” I was too out of breath to say anything else.

            Rebecca smirked. “This city has been through a great war before.”

            “That snake Berezovsky,” Jim grumbled. Peter hadn’t exactly lied to Jim, but he had let Jim stand right on top of the headquarters for hours with no further instruction.

            A shout in Polish came up from under us, but all I caught was, “Rebecca!” She shouted back something equally perplexing, before turning to us. “Ready?” she asked.

            I felt my stomach drop. I was not ready. I would never be ready to help hold up a rebellion, but I would also never be able to leave my friends behind. I had thought about it, believe me. I knew deep down that Erich would get me out, if I asked him. Even if everyone else refused to go, Erich would help me escape. I could have left at any moment, and I wanted to. I was terrified to face more long weeks in this ghetto. I was terrified to die in the snow when the soldiers came for us. But I stayed. For Rebecca and Jim and Hersch, for Erich I stayed.

            “What is he going to say?” I asked in a very small voice.

            Rebecca shook her head. “I don’t know.”

            Jim looked as anxious as I was, but if Rebecca didn’t know then no one did. We didn’t have a choice but to listen to what Hersch had to say. Rebecca went first into the hole, descending a steep flight of stairs. Jim went after her and I followed, totally unsure of what I would see.

            Like the basement where Rebecca and Hersch lived, the headquarters seemed to have once been the basement of the building. The walls had been knocked out, though, to make space, so the room was probably four times the size of the shop upstairs. There were gas lamps and candles, but it was still dark and murky down in the cellar. I was amazed to see so many people, real people. I had not encountered anyone new in days, Hersch had done such a good job keeping me off the street. I couldn’t make out the faces of the one hundred and fifty or so people who huddled around the lights, talking nervously in quiet Polish. There were others, agents for the Underground, I gathered, who went around passing out rations: bread crusts and cold vegetables, mostly.

            I finally caught sight of Hersch. He was standing back behind the raised rickty platform in the front of the room, talking seriously with Peter. Jim saw him too, and moved to join them, but Rebecca grabbed his shoulder. “Trust me, you will get yourself stabbed if you interrupt them right now.” Honestly, Hersch was not the one I cared about at the moment. Where was Erich? We needed him. Would he really not come, not even for me?

            Rebecca, of course, sensed my distress. “He will come, Gabriel. You know he will.”

            People had started to notice Rebecca’s arrival, and they swarmed over to her. There was an incomprehensible buzz of Polish, but you could tell right away the kind of respect she commanded. Grown men shook her hand and asked her questions, she nodded back the elderly people who bowed their heads to her. Girls and boys our own age seemed to make up most of the crowd, and they hugged her and whispered anxiously in her ear. Rebecca seemed overwhelmed, though. I didn’t have to speak Polish to know that everyone was asking what Hersch would say. She wanted to be reassuring to these people she cared so much about, but Hersch hadn’t included her in his decision.

            I got a little angry, as I watched her try to handle the crowd. Rebecca was just as capable as her brother, probably more so, actually, but their father had passed the Resistance on to Hersch. Rebecca would be just as great a leader as Hersch, but she would never get the chance. 

            Rebecca was trying to introduce us to the others, but the language barrier caused problems. Everyone seemed wary of us: outsiders who didn’t understand the situation, who didn’t even speak Polish, come to help with an uprising that might not even happen. We didn’t make any sense. I wondered if anything like this had ever happened before at all.

            “Who are these people?” Jim whispered to Rebecca. “This can’t be everyone in the ghetto.”

            Rebecca shook her head, waving away the woman who hung on her shoulder. “No, these are representatives. Most are part of the ŻOB, Jewish Combat Organization. They run the Underground now, but they are trained for fighting. The older ones come from the Judenrat that used to govern inside the ghetto before the soldiers disbanded it.” All the Polish was getting confusing, but Rebecca didn’t seem to care to explain any further. “Our father was a member of the Judenrat, but Mum was in the ŻOB, like me.” Trained for fighting; that wasn’t too surprising.

            The room suddenly went very quiet, but I couldn’t tell why until I turned around and saw that Peter had taken the platform. I hadn’t considered that he would be speaking Polish, and Jim and I collectively turned to Rebecca for translation.

            “He says, ‘Welcome brothers and sisters. Before we begin, let us pray the Mourner’s Kaddish for the loss of Bartholomew Markovic.’” A cry went up from behind us, and when I turned I saw a deathly thin woman folded over, crying into a friend’s shoulder. I noticed that Jim bristled, not turning around, and I remembered that he had seen the man die.

            Rebecca didn’t translate the prayer, so I don’t know what it said. But the sound gave me chills. Peter folded his hands and spoke the Hebrew chant slowly and steadily. The crying woman joined him when she could manage it, but mostly she just wailed over Peter’s voice. A few times, the rest responded by repeating Peter’s last phrase, mostly with amens. It was surprising to hear Hebrew come out of Rebecca’s mouth, but she bowed her head and said it reverently. I had never seen that side of her; Jim couldn’t take his eyes off her.

            I looked around for Hersch. When I saw him standing behind the platform, I realized that he wasn’t praying. He lowered his eyes and clasped his hands, but his mouth didn’t move. I remembered suddenly what Jim had told me once: Hersch didn’t believe in God. I knew he had every right not to, the world had done nothing but hurt him, but I couldn’t imagine living in a place like this without any faith. I couldn’t imagine how he could lead these people, who were praying with their hands folded or their arms outstretched. I touched the rosary under my shirt, sending up a prayer of my own.

            When the prayer was over, Peter handed the stage over to Hersch without a word. I could see that Peter was bitter at being outranked by Hersch, but I could also see how much better the community responded to Hersch. There was a tension in the crowd when Peter led the prayer, but everyone seemed considerably more at ease when Hersch stepped up. I wondered if it was simply out of a sense of familiarity; I wished I knew how much Hersch looked and sounded like his father. I could only imagine the great leader Hersch’s father must have been, if the rebels still wanted to follow Hersch after two years of inactivity.

            Rebecca was a good translator, almost like she could anticipate what Hersch would say. She whispered over him, accurately enough that I almost forgot Hersch himself was actually speaking Polish.

            “‘My friends, I will not waste words. The soldiers plan to liquidate the ghetto in a matter of weeks.” The sense of ease that Hersch had brought to the room evaporated immediately, as the crowd descended into an uproar of mixed emotions. Some were visibly afraid: a man in front of me cried out in Polish, grasping his wife’s arm as if the Germans were coming at that moment. A girl our age supported her elderly mother, who looked like she might collapse. Some seemed shockingly indignant, though. Two men to our right almost immediately broke into an argument, and one of them yelled out to Hersch. Rebecca couldn’t translate what he said, she was busy calming the people around us, but she picked back up with Hersch’s response.

            “‘We have recently recruited an agent inside the enemy lines.’” Someone out of sight shouted angrily, but I caught the word Nazi. “‘Yes, a soldier. One who wants his freedom as much as we do. He is an associate of mine from my year on the outside, as Rebecca will tell you as well.’” Rebecca had barely finished translating before the crowd suddenly focused its attention on us. Rebecca only nodded, answering briskly in Polish. I heard Erich’s name in the muddle of incomprehensible Polish.

            “Where is he?” Jim hissed under his breath. Rebecca shushed him angrily, but others seemed to share Jim’s feelings. The voices were angrier than before; Hersch couldn’t seem to keep up with their questions.

            “They want to know where he is,” Rebecca explained. “How can we trust him? Why would he help us? They think… s**t, they think this is a trap.” Peter, from his place behind Hersch, looked annoyingly satisfied. “I’m sorry, Gabriel.” There was a knot in my stomach; where was Erich? He had to come. He had to come. Rebecca had to pick up Hersch’s translation again, after that.

            “‘Sturmmann Amery is not one of them. But he does have their trust, and he will be a valuable asset to our efforts. So too will be my friends from the outside, the American James Banhart and Briton Gabriel Moretti.’” There was suddenly an uncomfortable level of attention focused on us. More than a hundred pairs of eyes turned uncertainly towards Jim and me, and I realized how completely useless we must have seemed. “‘Banhart has worked as an agent to the Underground on the outside for a year. Moretti is close with Sturmmann Amery and will guarantee his cooperation throughout the next few weeks.’” Was that really all I was good for, keeping Erich around? It wasn’t exactly an inaccurate description, but I felt the brunt of the room’s hostility focus on me at the revelation that I was linked to the Nazi agent. I wished Hersch had left that out. Rebecca put a hand on my shoulder.

            Someone called out from the crowd. “They want to know what Peter thinks,” Rebecca scowled, knowing what Peter would say.

            Hersch yielded the platform to Berezovsky. “‘Brothers and sisters, though I believe Herschel has good intentions, I do not trust this German scum.’ Skurwysyn!” Rebecca cut off her translation to yell at him in Polish. “In the few days since he arrived here, the Abrahamsons were nearly discovered for the first time in two years. I believe his superiors brought this Amery here when they learned of his time in England with Herschel. He is nothing but a tool being used to destroy their family once and for all.’”

            “He wouldn’t!” I heard myself yelling, though no one could understand my English. “Tell them, Hersch!” I yelled desperately up to him. “Tell them he ran away from the Nazis once before! He doesn’t want to be one of them! He wants to help us!” I wasn’t the only one yelling; the whole place had descended into an uproar. This was madness. Nothing would ever get done like this. Peter had been right: they would never trust Erich. Liquidation would come and no one would be ready, Peter’s revolution would be wasted, and Hersch would die.

            “Listen!” The word, yelled in English, came from the stairs. I whipped around, disoriented by the unexpected sound of English. He rose from his seat in the dark corner behind the stairs, dressed in street clothes, out of his uniform. Erich. He locked eyes with Hersch, as the crowd backed away from him, recognizing his dangerous accent.

            “Tell them,” he said, hiding his German accent with faltering difficulty. “I am Sturmmann Amery, and I am one of you.”

Reviews

[Bexfinch]

This was really really good, you have amazing charter development and ugh I love Gabe so much! It is nice that it focusses on many problems but in a succinct way that makes sense. I wish more people saw this! You should be like the next John Green! Lol but really, the story is amazing! You are one of my favorite online writers because ever sense the attic I seem to always find myself checking on your writing =. But anyway great job!

100000000/100 :)