safe-conduct for foreigners out of Warsaw, or perhaps imminent surrender! Nothing but surrender made sense now. He thought of waking Byron and asking him to leave the office, but decided to wait. The mayor might not arrive for a while. This grimy kid needed sleep.
Water had become a problem all through Warsaw; and in the embassy, with seventy people under one roof and more coming, it was — or might have been — an alarming, a disastrous problem. But from the day the water main had broken, Byron Henry had started supplying water, though nobody had asked him to. While Slote had been on the telephone to the mayor’s office twenty times on that first wretched day — demanding immediate water delivery for Americans in his charge and swift repair of the main, Byron had gone out in the embassy’s Ford pickup truck, and had retrieved from the cellar of a bombed-out house a rusty broken little boiler. Somewhere he had obtained soldering tools to patch it up, and now he was using it as a makeshift tank to bring water to the embassy. What would have happened otherwise there was no telling. The main was still broken, mains were broken everywhere now, and the city government was overburdened supplying just the hospitals and the fire fighters from tank trucks.
Day after day, as a matter of course, Byron fetched water, through bombardment and air attack, joking about his own terror, and often arriving much filthier than he was now, having dived into some rubble pile at the “whiffling” sound of a howitzer shell sailing through the air. Slote had never heard this “whiffling,” as many people described it and never wanted to. Despite these scares, Byron Henry actually seemed to be enjoying himself in the siege. This state of mind Slote regarded as stupider than his own, and not particularly admirable. His fear at least was rational. Natalie had told him of Byron’s remark that he was having fun. The boy was a neurotic, Slote thought; the excessively bland good nature was a mask. But his water-carrying was an undeniable blessing.
Slote was also grateful to Henry, in an obscurer way, for keeping Natalie Jastrow occupied when she wasn’t at the hospital. Natalie was the one person in Warsaw capable of penetrating to his secret fear. So far he was sure she had not, simply through not being around him enough. The girl’s presence in Warsaw, a haunting burden, gave him pangs of hatred for her. As it was, she plagued him with guilt and anxiety by existing, by not vanishing from the earth. He had a wild physical craving for this dark-haired strong-willed Jewess, but he didn’t want to marry her. A smooth hand at managing romantic liaisons, he had never before come up against such an iron girl. She had broken off their sexual relations in Paris and had never resumed them; she had told him half a dozen times to let her alone and forget her — the one thing he could not do. Why in the devil’s name, then, had she thrust herself on him in this evil hour, in this holocaust, in a city shuddering under bombs and shells, where he was saddled with the heaviest responsibility of his life and yet felt befogged and castrated by fear? He dreaded exposure of his fear to Natalie more than anything, except getting hurt. He thought now that if they escaped with their lives, he would summon his willpower to cut this dragging business off. 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 well-furnished 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.”
“Yes? 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 Tarnopol 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 in the 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-Rudz, 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 can 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 Stockholm.”
“I guarantee you immediate transmission. You can send this in plain language. Let the whole world know,” the mayor shouted, waving a fist, “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. They’ll 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. We’ll be ready to transmit in half an hour.”
In a more businesslike tone Starzynski said, “Call my office, and we will 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 the evacuation 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
